Ten or so years ago I was briefly au-pairing in the Netherlands, to make some summer money after my seasonal job ended.
The native host family with whom I was staying with had a little girl, ten or eleven iirc, whom I tutored and babysat essentially. She was all frizzy-blonde and peppy, into glitter & ponies and suchlike as you might expect and as many are, and young for her age. She’d be scandalised if you said “shit” in front of her. That sort of child. It’s important for the reveal of this story that you have a mental image.
One day, I was chatting with her in English as we often did to improve her spoken fluency (she was already good enough, really, moreso than I speaking Dutch), mainly about her life experiences. And we got onto the subject of diversity, I mentioning that there seemed fewer POC walking out and about where we were than back in my home country.
And out of nowhere, this sweet little cherub hit me with this incredibly graphic, angry tale of a time when black migrants once attempted to carjack her & her family at knifepoint while waiting to board a ferry. She went way beyond calling for parity or even retribution. It was like hearing Angelina Ballerina suddenly spouting NF prop like Combo. Or a mini Band Of Maidens speech.
She casually peppered this story with what I can only describe as very adult and explicit invective and slurs (I’m terminally Brit and Millennial, I can’t bring myself to type it). I’d never in my life heard a Western child so young and innocent-seeming come out with this rhetoric. I’m not sure she understood the full gravity of what she was saying, and suspect she must have picked it up from adults around her, parents & older siblings (she had much older ones) and neighbours. Friends I was reeling.
Of course, I can understand her fear and trauma. Especially since, young as she was, there was a danger of her being assaulted or raped (thankfully neither she or her mother experienced this). I’d be angry and traumatised, too. And it shouldn’t have happened to everyday people going about their business.
However, this little girl lacked the life context and critical thinking to grasp that all men do this, colour and class irrespective. They just operate in different ways accordingly. For her to grow up blind to the fact that a white or yellow man could and likely at some point shall easily threaten her on this same level, say at her workplace or in her home or in her doctors’ office, is very dangerous and naive thinking. I wish I’d more driven that point home to her at the time, I was too shocked.
She must be about nineteen or coming up for twenty years old, now. I’m scared to follow up and find out what became of her.