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Summary

In this conversation, Caroline J. Sumlin discusses the need to dismantle oppressive systems and the philosophy of liberation in parenting and education. She emphasizes the importance of child liberation and how homeschooling can serve as a means of achieving this. The conversation also explores the impact of white supremacy on education and the necessity of personal growth in the journey towards liberation. Caroline shares her insights on navigating the complexities of parenting and activism, ultimately calling for a collective effort to empower change.

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Books mentioned: We’ll All Be Free by Caroline J. Sumlin (book here, audible here)

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Read the Transcript:

Adrienne
Hi everyone, welcome back to the show. I have one of my favorite, favorite people on earth, Caroline here with me. She is an author, she’s a mother, she’s a homeschooler, she’s an activist, she is all the things. So welcome to the show, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me, it’s an honor. Yeah, do you wanna just give everyone a little intro, because they don’t know or not familiar with you or your work?

Caroline:
Yeah, sure. So you mentioned, my name is Caroline J. Sumlin, I’m an author, speaker, content creator, and I cover topics that intersect social justice, culture, self-worth, and honestly overall lifestyle because that includes homeschool, mothering, et cetera. the common theme of all of my work is liberation. How do we achieve liberation in all areas of life? Focusing specifically on dissecting the roots of the issues that we have with freedom in our society and how do we dismantle those? How do we live beyond those, et cetera, et cetera, which I’m sure we will get more into as we talk.

Adrienne:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, thank you so much. Let’s start with that idea of having it all be connected and that intersectionality because I find it so fascinating when people look at things like, well, this is my like parenting. This here is my homeschooling. This here is my social activism. This here and they’re like very compartmentalized into these groups. But you and I don’t feel that way, we definitely feel like it’s all this giant network, and you start to pull one thread, and everything starts to unravel, and you start to see this system of oppression over here related to this over here related to this over here. So how do you approach that? Let’s start maybe with homeschooling and parenting first. What does that look like for you? How do you connect those two things? How do you connect liberation, parenting, homeschooling, those three things.

Caroline:
Yeah, I mean, I think when we talk about liberation or we hear the word liberation, it sounds so big and so gigantic. But if you break the word liberation down, it really is truly just freedom, right? And it’s the fact that I believe, and I don’t see why any other human wouldn’t believe this, that every single human has a birthright to live freely. And so unfortunately we do live in a society, we live in a culture that does not believe in those things. Even if the culture and society will tell you it does, evidence clearly shows that we are a society that was built on oppression. It was built on the concept of a caste system that puts some humans over other humans and believes that certain humans being better than other humans should be at the top, should yield most or if not all of the power, et cetera. And those systems have been built to create in such a way where anyone who is considered to be less than does not have access to that and doesn’t have access to live freely within themselves than they’re within their personhood. the fact that alone really, should kind of be, I don’t mean this to sound condescending in any kind of way, but it really should be common sense that applies to every area of our lives. So when you consider motherhood or parenthood in general, right? When you’re bringing your children up, number one thing that we as parents care about is our children and their rights and their personhood and their autonomy and their ability to, excuse me, they’re right, they have a right to come into a world that should do nothing but see them as the people that we see them as, right? And so in our parenting, the choices we make should be reflecting that underlying value or overarching value of liberation. But again, because we talked about our society not being what it should be, it turns into parenting our children in such a way where recognizing that, unfortunately, the actions and the activism and the things that we’re doing right now in our adulthood is as much as we want to be able to snap our fingers and that have all this impact in our children by the time they’re adults to be able to just walk into the world and be like, ha ha, they did all the work for us, we’re free now. We know that that’s not gonna be the case. So unfortunately, it’s gonna look more like seeds that we’re planting that then our children based on the way that we’re parenting them will have the tools to be able to water the seeds that we’ve planted.And then as they’re watering and should they choose to have children passing that on to the next generation who will then continue to oversee that growth. So that’s the way that I look at it. I think you asked about homeschooling, but I feel like I’ve also been talking a lot so I’m gonna pause.

Adrienne:
No, but like parenting homeschooling, like I always equate the two because what are you really doing that’s different in homeschooling than parenting? You’re not, you’re observing your kids, you’re guiding your kids, you’re supporting your kids, you’re learning with your kids, you’re teaching your kids. Like it’s, to me, I look at it as being the same thing. Something that you were talking about. So yeah, I just wanted to point out that I’ve done this Venn diagram that I will post on Instagram about like homeschooling right-wing extremists and then leftist homeschoolers because in the middle, we both spout freedom, autonomy. We spout consent. We spout like many of the same things, right? But then when you actually get into what that means for both of those groups, where I fall on the leftist side and we talk about, that means, you know, being pro-choice. That we’re teaching critical race theory. We’re teaching that diversity and inclusion. We’re teaching, dismantling these systems. But if you look at on that right side of the Venn diagram, they are very much yes, rights and freedoms, but just for us. Like yes, rights and freedoms, but we are anti-vax because we have the right to not get vaccinated. And we don’t care about the ramifications for marginalized communities or whatever. So it’s like, it’s such a fascinating thing because you and I can talk about freedom all day long and you might have a group of people like, yeah, yeah, freedom, but we actually need to get down to what that means and defining it and what that looks like before you very quickly realize we all have super different definitions of what freedom means and who it’s for and who gets to have it, right?

Caroline: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Adrienne: 
Let’s go into your book a little bit. I think it is such a fantastic resource, so I’ll put it in the show notes for sure. But how did it come about? What was kind of the catalyst behind writing it? What were you thinking of? What is it a love letter to all of that kind of stuff?

Caroline:
Yeah, absolutely. mean, even just kind of using what you were just saying to kind of introduce this answer, I guess. This idea that what you just described as far as the more so right wing or conservative definition of freedom is what our society was built on, right? And that is how a lot of people that fall on that side of the spectrum or just essentially, even if you don’t fall on that side, I mean, honestly, the way that we are taught, the way that we were taught in schools or even, know, they’re still being taught today, we are taught this idea that the definition of freedom that America writes is the definition. And that definition is such that it belongs to certain people that look a certain way, that are a certain demographic. I was gonna say, I mean, everything, know, the things, right? And that this country exists to ensure that those people maintain it, period. Every single area of society was built on that premise that those specific people have the right to maintain their freedom. And their belief is should anybody else gain access to the freedom we inhabit then that must mean I no longer have that freedom. And that’s essentially the idea that our country was built on, right? So in my, and in the title of my book, we’ll all be Free And I explicitly say how a culture of white supremacy devalues us and how we can reclaim our true worth. Well, that word white supremacy really gets people shaken in their boots. But what that means essentially is that there’s this idea that whiteness is superior, it is supreme, and it is what should have the power. And if power and freedom, which essentially coincide, because to have freedom is to have power, if that should end up in the quote unquote wrong hands, so that they may say, then it immediately will drain me of mine, right?

Adrienne: Devalue my position.

Caroline:
Exactly. So my book is written in such a way where it helps anyone who should pick it up understand how these systems that we have been conditioned to believe in, conditioned to just follow without really thinking twice about it, is devaluing all of us of our freedom and all of us of the way in which we see ourselves. But because it is literally the fabric of our culture, it’s the DNA of our society. Again, it’s something that it’s normal, it’s normalized. If you really think about the way that we talk about ourselves even. It’s normal to not think highly of yourself unless you adhere to this standard that our society has said, this is what you should look like and do and be in order to be worthy of freedom and power in our country. the book came about more so it came about with my own revelation about those things because again, until you know, these truths, don’t really, you just fall in line. You fall in line with what’s normal and you think nothing of it. And when I first began researching the concept of white supremacy, it was not to connect it to self-worth. It was not to connect it to our, the value that we see in ourselves and others as humans really to simply understand the root of racism. That was because as a black woman, I have always asked myself the question, why do they hate us? Like legitimately that phrase, why do they hate us? And every single time a racist tragedy would occur, it would bring, re-bring up those feelings and those questions that I’ve had since childhood. I remember asking myself those questions when my mom would teach me the realities of racism and teach me what to watch out for when encountering and dealing with white people, which being raised in a predominantly white area where I grew up and the schools that I went to, et cetera, that was my daily reality. So I was constantly being taught how to navigate the world as someone who was seen as inferior. Now I was never taught that I was inferior, but I was taught the world will see you this way, white folks will see you this way, it’s the way it is and here’s how you play that game. And so even as a child, I began asking the questions, well, why? Like why is it that way? But I

Adrienne: It’s not nonsensical.

Caroline: 
Right, right, exactly. I just kind of began thinking like, it had to start somewhere, right? It had to start somewhere. Where did it start? Who came up with the brilliant idea, right?

Adrienne: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re not born with this idea, yeah?

Caroline:
Exactly, right? So when a lot of things started to surge in 2020 and 2021, I began re-asking those questions and deciding this is when I’m gonna do the deep dive, this is when I’m gonna really get into the research and find out these answers for myself. I was not expecting to uncover the research that I uncovered about not only just systemic white supremacy, but white supremacy culture and the infiltration that it is of our society. And when I did, that’s when I realized, wait a second, every single thing that I’ve thought and believed about myself, about what’s good and true and what’s successful and what’s a standard and the way that I should be or behave or perform has all been rooted in whiteness. And it was like, was like, it was in front of me the whole time, but it just took that to be like, no, really? okay. Right. And that’s how the book came about. And to, you you mentioned who was it a love letter to, mean, honestly, it’s kind of a love letter to myself, really, because it is something I took myself through my own journey of unpacking white supremacy in all the areas that I knew I had been impacted by it. And every single chapter has a personal story in there that talks about the way that I was affected by it in the past, whether that be times where I starved myself to times that I pushed myself too hard in school. It’s a love letter to myself, but it’s also a love letter to every single person that’s ever whispered to themselves, I’m not enough. And it takes that broad concept that we all have struggled with, but it attaches something very tangible and real and data-driven to it that I think is quite surprising when people pick it up, but then quite eye-opening as well.

Adrienne: 
I love that so much. One thing that really stood out to me as I was listening to it, because I don’t read anything on paper, listen to everything, but it made me think of in every single circumstance, every single different system of oppression, it’s all rooted from that same place. So if you look at Western culture, you look at consumerism, if you look at capitalism, if you look at ableism, like all of it is rooted in this power over dominance, right? Which comes initially and originally from colonialism and that white colonialism. you take a look at climate activism and you look at, you know, resources getting exploited from XYZ country, it’s all white colonial powers with their hands in everything like you said, affects then how we grieve, how we rest, how we work, how we think, how we learn all of it. And for me in particular, the passion that I really got drawn to was how this came about with school and with parenting, especially. so it’s a pretty common narrative that homeschooling is for the rich and it’s for the white and it’s for the privileged, right? Lately though, do we not see like the numbers for black homeschoolers, especially in the States, it’s skyrocketing because school is not this like, we have people that right that are like, well, it’s so necessary. Like how dare you pull your kids out of school? You’re gutting the system. We need people in there. It’s just going to leave people worse, blah, blah. What about the black and brown communities who the school, the prison pipeline? That’s not an option. I’m not going to put my kids through that. It is not an option for me that I’m going to put my kids in this environment that is teaching whitewashed history and all of this. So I want to dive into that a little bit because when you look up homeschooling on anything, it’s a bunch of white faces, right? And white families. And it’s a bunch of moms homesteading and canning and preserving and gardening and you know, raising chickens and wearing linen and whatever. So it has this face, this like very particular image of what homeschooling is. And, but I don’t want to go into, okay, like black child liberation. So much of that can happen and happens in the homeschooling community for families just like yours. So I want you to walk me through your story of like, did your kids start in school? Did they not? Did you pull them? What was that experience? What was your decision behind it? Your purpose? yeah, kind of your intentions with homeschooling because I assume most of my audience is white, but leftist leaning. And so it’s really nice just to have voices and experiences and anecdotes from people who are not a part of the traditional conservative white Christian homeschooling community.

Caroline:
Yeah, absolutely. It definitely was never my original intention to homeschool. I did teach public school for five years, which also was not my intention to do. I have a journalism degree. I had no desires to go into school teaching, my parents were educators. My dad was a professor. My mom was a secondary education teacher in St. Paul public schools. I was raised around educators. My godparents were principals in St. Paul public schools and grew up in the Twin Cities. So education was all around me. I had personally, even though was a very white public school experience, it was still more positive than negative. Even though there were, in hindsight, reflecting on the microaggressions and things and just the way that I was raised to believe whiteness was standard and better was obviously quite harmful. But if you were to remove that and just talk specifically about the school itself, the teachers, the fact that we have resources and that I was challenged. right now I know a lot of schools and so one of the reasons why we homeschool is because our students aren’t even getting challenged like that anymore, right? A lot of education is falling behind. And I was raised in such a way where, you know, I was always supposed to be challenged. I was also supposed to be doing the advanced and the extra, da-da-da-da, but I could take general education classes in my schools and still be quite challenged, I had my high school experience, you know, we had a lot of resources, we had a whole broadcast studio in the high school that literally led to my love for broadcast journalism. I was on a nationally recognized speech team and I traveled all over the country to compete for speech. So all these things, I had always had like a positive image of school. I never thought to myself, like I would homeschool, know, like just the thought of that would be like, what? When I began staying at home with my children after I taught education, guess, in special education for five years. And then when I had my second child was when we decided to stay home, I decided to stay home. And that was purely financial because at that point, we didn’t have the income from my paycheck to justify paying for childcare. And so that stay home decision was strictly like, I got a job working online as a virtual assistant to make up the money that I was gonna be missing if I had gone back to school as a teacher, which just goes to show the brokenness there. But by then I had also spent five years, like I said, inside the system. I had worked for Title I schools that were lower income and predominantly black. And I had worked for one of the richest schools in the area. And I had seen like literally both ends of the spectrum. and I will say my stepson was in high school at the time. And so I was also witnessing him receiving that education. had been in his life since he was in fifth grade. So I had also kind of been dealing with meeting his teachers and just kind of seeing it from the student perspective where I would be living to kind of decide and make decisions about what that would look like for my children. And there was nothing that was making me overwhelmingly excited about sending my kids to school. And I started to get that kind of like, but I wanted to resist it because I also, I’m not a natural stay at home mom. I am a natural career woman. I love to work. I love to be out there doing fun things that are work. That is literally all I’ve ever wanted to do. I was that kid. I wasn’t even that kid that wanted to play that much. Give me a pencil and put me in front of the classroom and make me do my times tables. I’ll be happier doing that than I am playing on the playground. So that just goes to show my personality. So I never thought like, yeah, let’s stay home. Let’s be together. Let’s, no, no, no. I couldn’t wait for these kids to go to school. Okay. I was like counting down the days for preschool to start. And when we got to the point of preschool and I realized how much they were gonna charge for some ABCs and one, two, threes, I was like, you know, my kids already know that. So what are we, what else are we gonna do? So again, it became more of a financial decision. But then the more I got into it and the more I began to find, I began to befriend black homeschoolers online. I began to look into some black homeschooling groups in my area And I began to do more research about the types of schools that were in my area. And I began to reflect again on my own school journey. And all this is happening while I’m also doing research for this book. And I began to realize, wait a second, just because the school is okay, or just because the school, you know, is, you know, might be nice to my kids doesn’t necessarily mean that my children are going to be able to have access to their most liberated education that they can have access to. And especially where I live now, which is in Virginia, which is not a very happy place for things like black history, for being taught things that are, we, you and I deem to be important when it comes to decolonization and liberation that began to inform more and more of my decision. And I began to notice the needs of my own children as well, just between their sensitivities and just their humanity, even outside of them being black girls, just their humanity in general, what they needed to be able to learn at their best selves, which did not look like a traditional classroom setting. And that began to inform more and more of my decision to homeschool. But then of course, when we really dove into what was going on with book bans and what was going on with our children, specifically black children, you’re either being overly punished or you’re being under looked at and you’re being ignored altogether. And I just didn’t want that for my children. Like, sure, I could send my children to school and they would get an okay education and I could probably supplement just like my mom did, right? I learned all my black history at home. I had all the books. We went to all the things. You know, I had many black community, communal things that I did in the Twin Cities that were totally outside of my little white suburb. I would go into St. Paul and do all the black stuff. I can go into Minneapolis and do all the black stuff. And then I go to school with all the white people in the suburbs. I can do the same thing for my kids and they would be okay. But would they have access to their most liberated education? And right now the answer is no. And so that’s what continues to fuel my passion for homeschooling them.

Adrienne:
I love that so much because I think it gives such a different and diverse perspective of what people think about homeschooling, right? Because often we hear, I can’t homeschool because I can’t afford it. Your story seems to be the exact opposite. We also hear things like, well, I can’t, like I know as a teacher and maybe you heard this too, like how dare you leave the system? Like it’s such a cowardly move or like you should be in there and maybe especially as a black educator. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this, but like, wow, what a difference you could make though, being in the classroom with black students. Like there’s always going to be those arguments, but, I don’t know if you feel this way, but I kind of always come to, but my kids, one, my kids aren’t pawns that I want to put in this system in the sense that it is not their burden to bear that they have to stay in this oppressive system so that it doesn’t get gutted. Like one, that is not very consensual in my opinion and not giving them that autonomy to, as you said, live this liberated life. Two, it is not either a sustainable or viable solution for a bunch of
women in particular, because that seems to dominate elementary school. As far as educators go, it’s very heavy dominated by women. But to have them be exploited, undervalued, underpaid, overworked, to have all of that unpaid invisible labor going on as well, and then coming home with hardly anything for their own kids, let’s say that was my personal experience, that’s not the solution either. And so I like going into these arguments of like, okay, yeah, school is necessary for some. Yeah. So let’s look at that. That seems to be a problem. That’s a problem with wages. And when I kind of break it all down, it’s all related to these oppressive systems, right? Like it’s all related to us all being overworked and our wages not matching our living expenses, for example, or it’s all related to that missing that holistic idea of how kids should be treated because we can absolutely have systems of public education that are liberating. We just need to dismantle and define kind of what that looks like and dismantle the current systems that I know people talk about these systems as being broken, but I kind of look at it as operating exactly how they’re supposed to. Like if, the goal is to raise people who can be obedient, who can conform, who are going to be fed a certain propaganda about white history and black history, who are going to learn how to operate according to a bell schedule and who are going to tie their self-worth to their performance and productivity and who are going to be raised from a very young age with threats and bribes and rewards and punishments and gold stars and test scores and all of this. The system is actually working exactly how it was designed. Yeah, absolutely. If you dig into what the system was created for and why it’s still currently operates. So whether or not it’s necessary for some families, which is a topic, and let’s discuss that and let’s deal with that. But that doesn’t mean that the system isn’t oppressive or toxic or dysfunctional in many, ways, or that it’s not dangerous and harmful to maybe the emotional well-being of lots of kids, or it’s disproportionately detrimental to black and brown kids, or trans kids, or queer kids, right? Or neurodivergent kids, like kids having to mask all day long and pretend like they don’t have autism to be able to function in this neurotypical environment, that’s oppressive. And again, if you look at racism, if you look at ableism, if you look at sexism, all of those isms, they’re all inextricably tied together under this guise of this white supremacy, right? These supremacist systems and this colonialism and imperialism and all of it. So once you start to pull at that and see like, this is actually super harmful for all the demographics that are marginalized. And I don’t just mean school. I pick on school a lot, but that could be a religion. That could be your oppressive, right? Like Christianity, that could be certain environments in sports. You could have that, you could have that with Boy Scouts, like whatever it is, you can have that at home, right? Where these oppressive tactics and this power dominance, this hierarchical idea of top-down parenting, teaching, coaching, whatever, is going to more detrimentally, like disproportionately affect those marginalized demographics and kids in my personal opinion, are the most marginalized demographic. yeah. Right? In every single way, they’re the ones born into this automatic power dynamic situation. They have the fewest recognized rights of any other demographic. And so I really, really like that your book and your passion and your work, like we talk about that liberation starting at home and starting with our kids.

OK, one thing I wanted to ask you was, I think we share this idea that the systems need to be dismantled, but how we go about that seems to be different for a lot of different people. And as we’re seeing the US election approach, as we’re seeing certain policies being supported with Israel and genocide, as we’re seeing things like the death penalty still existing, I think it brings to light the these very strong passionate feelings about how dismantling the systems needs to work. So I’m not really interested in anyone who’s like, no, the system is great. I think for the most part, we’re all in the same boat of like minded people that are like, the system is the problem. It’s colonial, it’s, you imperialistic, it’s intrinsically flawed. And so it needs to go and we need to rethink this whole thing with an open mind and really thinking outside the box and not operating all the time in this system. But there’s these differences of opinions between revolution and abolishing the whole thing and burning it all to the ground. And the approach that I find you talk about in your book, which is dismantling piece by piece. So I was just wondering if you could talk to that about that a little bit and about why this approach resonates with you more, why you think it’s the way forward, and just kind of the thinking behind it and what you want my audience to really understand about this system. Because I personally think my audience is into dismantling these systems, whether it’s school, whether it’s government, whether it’s capitalism, consumers, and whatever.

How do we go about that? What is your philosophy?

Caroline:
Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, first I want to say I completely understand the desire to want to burn it all to the ground. Like I might teach and talk about the fact that I don’t think that’s the best way to go about doing things. It doesn’t mean that I don’t get wanting to do that, right? Yeah. when you take drastic measures about something, forces action, right? If you’re, mean, this is, we’re going to knock on some wood here, but like, you know, having forbid your house burns to the ground, clearly you have no choice but to rebuild that house, right? However, when your house burns to the ground, even if you have no choice but to rebuild the house, you are also caught in a period of not having a house to live in, right? And so when I look at the way that we approach things and when I see that, that burn it all to the ground mentality, I see a lot of anger. I feel it, I feel it myself. And I see a lot of wanting to jump to these drastic measures without truly thinking it through. And when I think about the leaders that have come before us that have had the most impactful societal change, none of them took that approach. They were tactful and they were strategic in the way in which they went about doing things. They were patient, they understood. I mean, even if you just take something as cliche and well-known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, The Montgomery Bus Boycott, sure, there was one major action that took place, and there were a few others, but one that we essentially, that kind of spurred the movement, would have been Rosa Parks, right? Doing that drastic thing, right? And then of course they decided, okay, from there, they’re going to boycott riding the bus now. The way that we think about things in today’s day and age, would expect, most people expect there to be a demand for instant change, boycott a day maybe, right? Or go down to the bus depot and burn all the buses and give us our change right now. Whereas the leaders that put together the Montgomery Bus Boycott, first they organized, they strategized. They figured out ways to make it feasible, realizing they still had lives to live, they still have jobs to go to, they still had food to put on the table and a roof to keep over their heads. So what was gonna be the best way to go about doing that and begin to make those steps? And it took 

Adrienne: And acknowledging that the most marginalized communities are the ones that suffer most, right? In these scenarios.

Caroline:

exactly, exactly.

Yeah, you’re talking about people that needed the buses, most likely did not, not most likely, that did not have vehicles, automobiles to be able to get them to and from work. Some of them even had to rely on, was a lot, a lot of those black women were domestic workers and worked for white women and those white women had to come and drive, pick them up for work even to be able to get to work. So yes, when we’re talking about these systems and we’re talking about the fact that they are, you know, like we mentioned before, intrinsically flawed, we still have people that rely on the systems. Even when we’re going back to school, we still have children who rely on going to public school to get food, right? So if we were to burn it to the ground, we’re burning to the ground their meal. We’re burning to the ground their shelter for the day when they’re coming from homes that are not safe for them. So we have to think about all of those things. When we think about how can we maintain people’s safety, how can we maintain the fact that people still have lives to live, people still have meals that need to be eaten and their own personal things going on while working together to make strategic and incremental moves to dismantle these systems, recognizing that it does not happen overnight. It may not even, and more than likely, won’t happen in our lifetime. I don’t believe it will. And it’s not to be pessimistic, it’s just to be realistic. It won’t happen in our lifetime.

You know, so again, you know, they did that for a whole year before there was any law passed. And that’s just one oppressive system. So when you think about an entire nation, was built on over 400 some odd years of very specific way of doing things. And still, even though your audience, my audience, may be in agreement about the need to dismantle these systems. We are still a minority when it comes to the way that the majority of people think in this nation. The majority of people think and believe in the way that, excuse me, this nation operates. So it’s not likely that we are going to get people that are in positions of power to be able to just snap their fingers and take on a liberationist mindset. That’s just not gonna happen. We’re going to have to do it very strategically, one bill, one law, one movement, one leader, et cetera, et cetera, at a time. And over time, I do believe we’ll begin to see that change. And I also talk about in my book, it not just being with government leaders, it being with our own personal circles. Because I truly do believe there is a ripple effect that can take place should you think about the way that you want to see change and you begin to implement that change with your neighbor, with your friend, with your book club, you know, even as homeschool parents, you can still join the PTA. You can still join. You could still sit in on the school board. You can still go to your city hall meetings and begin to take small steps that feel tangible for you, feel doable for you and believe that a ripple effect will take place over time. So yeah, like I said, I get the anger, I get the passion for wanting to burn it all to the ground. get that when you look at the lives that are being lost, of course, anytime lives are being lost, which unfortunately under these oppressive systems is all the time. You have the mindset of, how many more lives, how many, I get that, believe me. If anyone’s gonna get that, it’s gonna be somebody who exists in one of the most marginalized bodies in this nation and in this world. As a black woman, we’ve been experiencing the loss of lives in our community since we got here. And even so, as lives were being lost, even so during the marches, during the fights, during the sit-ins and the bus boycotts and the lynchings and everything else, the cross burnings, the church burnings, the bombings, et cetera, et cetera. There was still the understanding that, but if we wanna make permanent change, we have to do this in a way that’s going to be lasting and it has to be tangible and it has to be strategic. And so I just, I…I do believe in that way forward.

Adrienne:
Well, and let’s…circling back to child liberation and how this can all start at home. Because I personally believe we have an immense impact and power to be able to change an entire generation by how we raise our kids. So let’s talk about that a little bit. I’m so interested in this idea of child liberation at home connected to this collective liberation because they are the ones, let’s say I have three kids, you have two. Yep, right. so, sorry, yeah, three. I technically have three. I have a stepson, he’s in college, he’s an adult now. okay, but three, still, let’s just say three. That is six people who will grow up knowing that we need to protect trans kids, who will grow up knowing that history is whitewashed and who will know true Black history and who will believe in land back indigenous rights and who will understand the importance of unpacking our ableism or our classism or whatever. That is, and think of those six people who they will interact with them for their entire lifetime, their audience online, their social circle in person, their community, their, you know, maybe they write a book, maybe they have a podcast, whatever, but that is you know that it just exponentially builds from, as you were saying, these ripple effects of having your, knowledge, this wisdom, this unpacking, these reframing, these beliefs, all of these things, starting with our own, just our own home. Cause I think so often people are like, well, I am not like how much power do I actually have to cause change?

How much of an impact can I possibly make? And I know it’s this helpless feeling that, again, comes from this idea of white supremacy and capitalism and keeping people feeling like they have no power, which I will bring Marcellus into this because earlier this week, we saw that a million signed petitions didn’t give us the outcome that we wanted, it being all over social media and having the jury and the prosecution on like that didn’t matter, which I feel like is very intentional marketing from this system of power in the US government in trying to demonstrate to us that the work that we do will not give us the results that we want, right? Which is so like despair is the strongest tool. I think that this system uses, right? Because as long as people feel helpless and as long as people feel like they have no hope, they’ll stop trying. Or they’ll work themselves to a point where they are so burned out that they can no longer feel like they can put their energy and resources, have no more capacity into affecting this change.

I that’s-

 am doing it all together. 

Yeah. You know I’m saying? 

Caroline:
Not even, you just be like, okay, like you mentioned with giving up, more so a change in, and change in mindset to the point of it’s like, actually, maybe, this is the right way. Maybe, this is what I should believe in. It’s all starting to sound convincing, you know, another, a third, a third way that.

Adrienne:
Yeah, And so you have that, which I know you and I try and do this all the time is holding these multiple truths as being right. They can exist at the same time and people can feel all of that and also be like, you know what, I’m gonna keep going and I’m gonna keep teaching my kids and I’m gonna keep unpacking for myself. Cause I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a way back. Like, I don’t know how anyone does this social activism work and this liberation work and this healing work. And then you just can’t unsee things anymore. You can’t unhear things. You can’t head back the other way.

Caroline:
Pretend, yeah. You won’t be fooling yourself. That’s for sure. Maybe everybody.

Adrienne:
So, well, yeah, so let’s get into, because I think that’s mostly relevant for my audience, is how we unpack this with our kids, how we make great amount of change with our own children, with our own unpacking and our own dismantling and our own reframing our beliefs and passing that down to our kids and how much of an effect that can have while also being so aware that we tend to bring in these systems to our own homes and in our own relationships with our kids. How often are we policing our own children while shouting defund the police over here? How often are we not honoring our children’s consent while being a part of Me Too movements and all those massive movements around bodily autonomy and consent, but, that doesn’t actually apply to my kids. Or unpacking this idea that our performance is not tied to our productivity and we have the right to rest, but then we also put our kids on this conveyor belt of having to perform and being in a million different things and activities and having to get all the trophies and tying their performance and their obedience to how much love they get and respect. So can you speak to that a little bit?

Caroline:
a lot of questions. You know, one thing I’ll say while you’re, know, with just that came up for me while you were speaking was the fact that I understand why as parents we can sometimes be hypocritical in the way that we, in what we’re teaching and what we’re doing. And I believe it’s, you know, the, I believe to be the greatest tool that white supremacy uses, which is fear. That’s what I believe is the greatest tool. that’s also, that’s based on the research that I use for my book and the characteristics of white supremacy culture by Dr. Tema Okun. And she talks about fear being the biggest one that is used, right? It is fear that drives us to be perfectionistic. It is fear that drives us to be obedient. It is fear that drives us to to focus on that sense of urgency or what have you, right? So even when I, in chapter two of my book, I talk about the relationship briefly about the relationship that I have with my mother and some of the things that she did to parent me, right?

And a lot of what she was driven by was fear, fear that I wouldn’t be successful, fear that I would end up pregnant at 16, fear of, raising a black woman, that I was gonna fall into a stereotype. And in her mind, demanding the obedience, demanding the productivity, demanding those things from me was the way that she felt was best to make sure, or to at least do her part in making sure that I would not end up in a position that she didn’t want me to end up in. And in a lot of ways it

Adrienne:
Understandable

Caroline: 
It’s understandable. It’s completely understandable. Now, of course, there’s also negative ramifications from that and things that I have had to deal with my entire life in now believing that my worth is attached to my productivity, like we were just speaking about, right? And not living a life where I feel free to be myself and that my humanity is worthy of love without needing to perform and the other things that we speak, we’ve spoken about, right? But I can, again, I can, that was never her intention to instill that in me, but it was the byproduct of the way in which she parented me because in her mind, the system was not set up for black women. So I got to make sure my daughter knows how to play this game.

Adrienne:
Which is not in her mind. That’s reality.

Caroline:
Yeah, that’s reality. I shouldn’t even say, you’re right. You’re right. Thank you for that. It’s not, wasn’t in her mind, but the reality. And she was definitely looking at the reality and thinking to herself, this is how I set my daughter up to, be able to overcome that reality. And there’s a lot of people that think that way. There’s a lot of people that think, you know what? I see the system is flawed. I already see the system is, it was not set up for our success as humans, especially if I exist in insert marginalization here, but I can either sink or swim it. And so some people just choose to go that swim route and choose to adhere to those things that we’ve been taught are the right ways to go about doing things in our society, especially because when you do choose to go against those things, society will find a way to punish you, so to speak, right? Society will find a way. So you kind of find, kind of are questioning, How do I toe that line? And so in our parenting, think a lot of times there is a, how do I toe that line? Right? How I feel fear when I see my child acting in a certain way because I worry what will happen when they’re not with me and they act that way.

Adrienne:
Which is such a different reality for marginalized communities because white families and white kids, you can teach your kids to be wild and feral and out in the world and you don’t have to obey because you know that there aren’t going to be consequences for them. Certainly not, yeah, life or death consequences. Maybe you’ll get an angry whatever, but it’s not going to be the same consequences. It’s also so important to acknowledge and recognize that that we as white people talking about liberation for our children is not the same as marginalized communities talking about liberation for their children because you’re actually having to have talks about how to properly interact with police or how to properly interact with authority or how to not look a certain way out in public or whatever, all the things, the burdens you carry that we just have the privilege to not worry about. So it is such a different conversation for liberation, even though the aspects and the principles might be the same of feeling free, having those rights, having those freedoms, consent, autonomy, whatever, but it just goes to support the idea that you’re saying that black parenting has a different lens because of the realities of our society today.

Caroline:
Right, 100%, exactly that. And because things exist in a duality, in a gray area, it’s not either or. And if you are a white parent, you still may also have certain things that you were taught that you need to unpack about where that drive for pushing obedience has come from or where that drive for pushing perfection is coming from. Because it’s coming from somewhere. It’s coming from something you were taught within our society. It’s the same characteristics, it’s the same traits, right? But taught from different angles based on where you and your family exist within the, I should say like the identity wheel and the power spectrum of society. But it’s still all rooted in white supremacy culture. I do think sometimes we do focus a little bit even on our own perfectionism and what we’re asking of parents and recognizing that it’s until you begin to do the unpacking of where these the motivation is coming from to parent in a certain way that you’re gonna truly be able to make those changes with your children. And it’s still going to come up for you. There’s still gonna be times where you default to something that you were taught and you were parented as. We have to remember, we are talking about conditioning. We’re talking about wiring. We’re talking about literal cultural thought patterns and behaviors being essentially imprinted into our brains. So it’s not something you can easily just read about and be like, aha, I’ve seen the light. I shall never make a mistake again. No, like you’re going, if you were parented or you were taught a certain way for however many years you were under your parents’ roof or influenced by your parents’ teachings. And if you think you’re gonna be able to snap your fingers and make immediate changes, you are mistaken, right? So part of that journey is going to be recognizing that you’re not gonna approach this in a perfect manner. You are gonna make mistakes, but part of your child liberation journey for your children will look like what it is, what it looks like to address those mistakes. What it looks like to be able to say, you know what, I didn’t give you consent there, or you know what, I take back what I said. And I do that all the time with my children. Like I might jump to saying something like, And then they might say, why not? I’m like, you know what, it’s your body, go ahead girl.

You go ahead. Like you make that choice. And it can be something as simple as making that shift in the moment that can be just as powerful as if you would have done it immediately, you know, and then having those conversations about church with your children. Well, why did you say it like this? Or why did you why? Why did you tell me no about this? And you can’t ever tell your children. No, I’m just using it as an example about about what that can look like. So I, you know, I do.

I do think, you know, I hear where you’re coming from when it comes to, you know, what we’re preaching about and what we’re, we say we stand for, and then sometimes not doing those same things in our home. But like I talk about in my book, you have to unpack, you have to peel back those layers of how white supremacy culture has impacted you personally, the things that you were taught, the messages you received from your parents, from media, from school, when you were a child. Even go as far back as, what messages were your parents receiving? How was your grandmama taught? You know, what did your granddaddy do? And really go as far back as you can to see the patterns to then be able to do the work to undo and unlearn that conditioning. And honestly, it’s going to be a lifelong journey, but trust and believe that whether you’re making mistakes or whether you have a day where you feel like you did it all the best way ever, you’re still providing so much more opportunity for liberation for your children that what was ever done previously.

Adrienne: Right. Yeah. Well, and it is lifelong. It starts with you, as you were saying, like, when you started with, the parenting paradigm and all these beliefs, are endless, that’s just how you were taught from your parents. And so what about adding on top of that? As you mentioned also, you’re adding church, you’re adding media, you’re adding your teachers, you’re adding your peers. So it’s layer and layer and layer. There are an infinite number of things that you’re going to need to unpack on a daily, weekly, yearly basis. So just like give yourself that grace. As you said, that’s such a good reminder that know what there is room for imperfect parenting. Just like there’s room for imperfect activism, right? But it’s a journey, it’s work. My gosh, it is so much work to parent yourself while you’re parenting kids. It is so, so challenging and so hard, but I love that. And I think let’s end on that like really hopeful message of giving yourself grace, you have more power than you know. You have the ability to exponentially impact the world and generations and society by starting to do your own work and starting to unpack that for yourself and reframing all those beliefs and then showing up better for yourself and then showing up better for your kids as a parent. But is there anything you wanna leave with white parents who are entering this world of social activism and trying to do better and reparent themselves and break these generational cycles, if you will, and break away from white supremacy.

Caroline:
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, we can get so caught up in our children, but we’re freeing ourselves. Like you said, we’re reparenting ourselves. But if you only looking at it as reparenting yourself for your child, you’re also missing it because you are liberating yourself an unliberated person cannot liberate their children, right? So you have to make sure that you’re going through the work to liberate yourself, which is what I wrote my book to be able to aid you on that journey. That’s why there’s journal prompts. That’s why it goes, the chapters go in the order it goes in for a reason to introduce you to the concepts, the idea, the history behind white supremacy culture and the way that it could have impacted you in your childhood and your upbringing, et cetera, to what you can actually do to rewire your brain to not think in the way that you’ve been conditioned to think or not behave in the way you’ve been conditioned to behave and what that can look like. So if you’re thinking about it for, well, I just wanna jump right in and my activism is my parenting, blah, blah, but you’re not actually doing the work to make sure that you yourself are achieving liberation, then I think you’re gonna find it, not only are you gonna find it a lot harder to do that with your children, but also just in general as a human, that is kind of missing the point, right? As a human, you deserve to live a liberated life.

Adrienne:
And as a woman and as a mom, which we always forget, right? Because it’s always, you wanna show up better for your kids, but you also deserve that because you’re a human.

Caroline:
Exactly, you deserve that because you’re a human. That essentially wraps it up, right? You deserve it because you are a human and you don’t need to justify your reasons for doing the work. don’t need to attach, again, that kind of goes back to that capitalism, that attaching that dignity and that worth to it you can detach all of that. even in our activism journeys, we have a tendency to be like, well, my doing this is resistance, my doing this is activism, my doing this is a da da da, right? Because we still conditioned to try to find a reason to prove why we need to be doing this. No, no, no, you don’t have to prove anything. You can just do it. You can just choose to go on a liberation journey because you love yourself and you want to be free, period.

Adrienne:
That’s what I found so enlightening about your book in particular, because as a white person, I think so many people are like, well, I’m not burdened by white supremacy because I’m white. So how can, what do I possibly need to unpack? Right? If I’m at the top of that privilege pyramid of white supremacy, what beliefs do I need to dismantle? And that’s what is so great. that anyone that picks up your book, white or not, but especially white, that’s my, my identity.

I was like, my God, there are so many things that impact me that I need to dismantle that I just, you don’t even think about it. Cause you’re in it, that meme of the goldfish and the fish bowl and the water and how the water is privilege and you’re just so unaware, right? And when you’re growing up in it. anyway, I just, that’s what I, yeah, really want to leave people with is that it is such a phenomenally insightful book for anyone.

So please pick it up and I’ll put it again in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here. I love your work. I really appreciate you and your time and what phenomenal insights come out of your work. So please support Caroline in any way that you can. And I’m sure we’ll chat soon.

Caroline:
Yes, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Love your work as well and everything that you’re doing.

Adrienne:
Bye Caroline. 

Caroline:
Bye.