Transracial Adoption, Faith, and Confirmation Bias (with Kristen Howerton)
In a special holiday week episode, we're sharing a wide-ranging conversation between Sarah and author and blogger Kristen Howerton. Kristen shares her experience with transracial adoption and how not everyone has the same work to do when it comes to racism. They also discuss processing trauma in faith communities, confirmation bias, and why certain people seem especially susceptible to conspiracy theories.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Kristen Howerton: [00:00:00] We've picked like just the parts of the civil rights movement or specifically Martin Luther King's words that feel comfortable for us. And so we're like, Oh yeah, totally. I want black and white kids to play together. That's nice. I don't really want to talk about how my silence makes me complicit, which he also said, or, you know, The stuff that he said about the problems with wealth.
Sarah: [00:00:30] This is Sarah
Beth: [00:00:31] and Beth.
Sarah: [00:00:32] You're listening to pantsuit politics,
Beth: [00:00:34] the home of grace-filled political conversations.
Sarah: [00:00:54] I am so excited to be here today with Kristen Howerton, author of Rage Against the [00:01:00] Minivan, learning to parent without perfection. As a long time follower of Kristin, I'm so excited to now call her my friend and so excited to welcome to the show. We invited Kristen, because we had a couple listeners reach out and say, Hey, in the middle of this racial reckoning and all these conversations about race, they felt like there was a real moment to talk to somebody who's experienced transracial fostering and transracial adoption.
Kristen immediately came to my mind because she has adopted transracially. She has four children. You had 4 under four at one time, which is a lot of the part of your book. And sometimes I think about it and it makes me sweat, but, um, you've lived it.
And as we talk about these issues, the best perspective is always the lived experience, I think. And so welcome to our show so much. And thank you for coming and talking about this with us.
Kristen Howerton: [00:01:53] Well, thanks for having me. So
Sarah: [00:01:55] First tell our audience who has not been following Rage Against the Minivan for [00:02:00] years and years like I have, tell us your family makeup, your story, even though it is, it is long and winding, and there is a graph and your illustration in your book to help people.
Kristen Howerton: [00:02:11] Well, what's so funny is that there is an illustration, there's like a timeline, like a Dusty Efski novel, because my my agent was like, I just can't keep track of it.
And I'm like, I know I kind of can't either because the kids came out of order. So I, my first child was foster to adopt so he was my foster child. He came to me when he was six months old and then I was able to adopt him when he was three and a half. So took little, little drama there in the middle of, is he staying? Is he going? We don't know. In the middle of that, I had a biological child. And then after you need
Sarah: [00:02:49] you need the, you need the illustration.
Kristen Howerton: [00:02:52] I know now I'm getting mixed up. Okay. And then in the middle of that, also I put in a petition to adopt from Haiti because [00:03:00] I knew that Jafta, would most likely ,we would adopt him. That's my oldest. And I did not want him to be the only black child in a white family.
Like I felt I had very strong feelings about that. Like, I just didn't want that and especially since I had my own white child, I'm like, okay, we need you know, he needs a sibling who is racially mirroring. And so I set out to adopt from Haiti because the foster adopt situation, as I mentioned, took three years and led to some mental health issues for myself.
It was really stressful. Really, just a lot of you know, is this child my son, or just a kid that I will foster for three years and then never see again. So I'm like, I don't want to do this again. I'm going to adopt from Haiti. That will be more direct and LOL because it wasn't, that also took three years.
And so in the middle of that adoption, I had another biological child who's my youngest then Kembe joined our [00:04:00] family at three and a half. So when Kembe joined the family Jafta was five, Kembe and India, my bio child were three and a half and Karis was almost a year old
Sarah: [00:04:13] and the three and a half year olds were born on the same day so you call them the twins to doubly tip people off their foundations, which I like.
Kristen Howerton: [00:04:20] Yeah. It's just a super weird thing that when we went to adopt from Haiti, you know, we kind of described our family and you know, it's interesting when you're not adopting an infant, because then you can describe like, Hey, our family is kind of like this and you know, a personality like this would be good.
And so when I was describing our family, I was like, um, I have two loud kids, like very assertive kids. And so, you know, we probably wouldn't do well with the shy one. Like we probably need a kid who has a voice and can hold his own. And she goes, Oh, I have just the kid. He's the loudest kid here. And he was, and he is always a loudest kid [00:05:00] wherever he goes still to this day, um not a shrinking violet.
But she, you know, reads this file to me. And she's like, Oh, here's his birthday. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, he was born on the same day as my daughter. That's really weird. So it's, it's been funny. Every new school that they go to, you know, a teacher will get a roster with two kids, same birthday, same last name, and have expectations of two children who will look like, and then they walk in it's it's very confusing and hilarious.
Sarah: [00:05:30] So one of my favorite chapters in your book is called the myth of colorblindness. And you talk about this narrative we have, Oh, kids don't notice color. You say, I'm going to read your words back to you. That's cool. Okay. Can we all just circle it for a moment and finally put this narrative duress, no racism in the preschool set does not have to be taught.
A kid does not have to have a parent who flies a Confederate flag and openly uses the N word to do something cruel or stupid to a child of color any more than the kid who makes fun of someone for wearing glasses means that his parents must hate people who wear glasses. Sometimes [00:06:00] good kids from non-racist homes can have moments of being terrible.
It does not serve anyone to believe the fantasy that a child can not spontaneously exclude or insult another child for their skin color unless their parents taught them to do so. Sometimes it happens as an experiment in exclusion in difference in sometimes it's learned, not from the parents, but from society.
Racism is embedded in the system of our everyday lives. Kids pick up on the subtle and unfair hierarchies that stem from those conditions. It happens way more than we want to believe. And by we, I mean, white people because people of color know the shit goes down and they are probably quite sick of our denial systems about it.
Kristen Howerton: [00:06:35] Yeah, right. I mean, it's interesting because I can remember as a child, I grew up in a very diverse area. And I remember at like five or six asking my mom, why are all the black people poor? I remember asking her that, because that was true where I lived. We, it was very segregated. We had neighborhoods. I grew up in Missouri, not far from Ferguson.
We had [00:07:00] neighborhoods that were predominantly black and they were always low-income and I noticed that as a very young child, like what's going on and you know, I think kids notice it, but then of course, what happened when I talked to my mom about it is she was like, well, everyone's equal. And we don't notice race and race doesn't matter when, what I should have been told is, well, Black people are living in poverty because it's the seventies and they've been disenfranchised and oppressed. And we're not that far off from Jim Crow, you know, like that's what should have been explained to me, but I didn't learn that until college.
So, you know, I just, I think it's so fascinating that white people really want to believe that racism like a child could never come into this on their own. I mean, I think every parent has watched in horror as their child has excluded someone else based on something stupid. Right? Like watch their kid on the [00:08:00] playground, say like, you can't play with us because it's boys only, right?
Like we've all watched our kids be absurd with things that we've never taught them like, I've never told my kid, like when you go to the playground, don't play with other genders, you know? And it happens. It happens with black kids, you know, kids leave them out or exclude them or stay away from them not because their parents have said we don't like black people, but because they maybe haven't had black people in their home, you know, there's a lot of white families who don't have black friends or they haven't bought their kids black dolls, kids pick up on all of that stuff. And when there's an other feeling about black people, kids will act that out.
Sarah: [00:08:46] I have this theory that this sort of colorblind narrative, that we were all taught because you know, kids this narrative, as we apply it to the preschool set and as kids sort of push up against it, you know, kids are just often a reflection of our [00:09:00] culture. Uh, so it's not like we can compartmentalize their behavior and say, that just happens with kids.
Kristen Howerton: [00:09:05] Right.
Sarah: [00:09:05] But I have this theory that like, sort of our generation was taught this and you have like a subset of white people who were taught the words of, I have a dream and maybe sort of got the subtle message that we are different, but this is the goal.
This is where we're at. This is where we're headed. And so when they're confronted with things that are different than that, like the death of George Floyd, like these, like these sort of moments that bubble up into the culture, they're mad because they've been on board with this goal. And they're willing.
And that's where you see sort of the, the white allies and the, and the, even the performative Instagram posts, everybody's got to start somewhere because they're like, no, but you told me this is where we're going. And so that's where we should be going. And then I think you have these other people, this other group of people who heard it knew there was difference.
And no one said. Didn't give them sort of the, the, the brackets, the foundation around that. So they, that they just [00:10:00] started to resent that message. They resented the Martin Luther King day and the, I have a dream because they felt like something was different and no, and people told them like, What's wrong with your life is because we're being forced down this road we don't want to go down to, and you hear it with the messaging around affirmative action and all this stuff.
And so these people are choosing to take this moment to say, I knew this was crap from the beginning and now is my chance to say it out loud. And it's like, we're all kind of pushing against this colorblind narrative, but in really, really different ways.
Kristen Howerton: [00:10:29] Yeah, I, well, I completely agree. And I think, you know, I think the part that a lot of well-meaning white people don't want to admit is that, you know, we've picked like just the, the parts of the civil rights movement or specifically Martin Luther King's words that feel comfortable for us. And so we're like, yeah, Oh, yeah, totally.
I want black and white kids to play together. That's nice. I don't really want to talk about how my silence makes me complicit, which he also [00:11:00] said, or, you know, the stuff that he said about the problems with wealth, right. You know, or we don't want to talk about those parts of Martin Luther King, this message. We just want to pick the one part where black and white kids are holding hands. And it doesn't really affect me in any way.
Sarah: [00:11:18] So black and white kids hold hands in your household. And it does affect you.
Kristen Howerton: [00:11:23] And what is the assault?
Sarah: [00:11:24] Yes. So tell us how you solved racism. Now, tell us what that means. Like, tell us that perspective when you really are like, you're, you're seeing this vision that people hold in their heads, but you know that the reality is different than the vision.
Like what do you wish you could sort of convey? What do you think people get wrong about transracial adoption, but this in general, but the interactions between racial identities, especially when they're under the same roof.
Kristen Howerton: [00:11:57] Yeah. I mean, I think what's interesting is [00:12:00] like that little, little part of Martin Luther King's message that we all cling to, that little part has come true in my house. I have two white kids, two black kids. They love each other as siblings. They literally live as brothers and sisters, but man, systemic racism is still right outside the door. Like as soon as we leave the house. And so, you know, the idea that we can solve this through sharing memes about a black kid and a white kid who don't even notice that they have racial differences and they think they look the same because they dress the same or, you know, a black kid and a white kid running towards each other and they love each other, like. That's great. That's all great.
But like, we have so much more work to do than that. Those are individual anecdotes, right? Those are lovely little stories, but like that, isn't going to change the fact that, that black kid who has a best friend who's white is still susceptible to being pulled over for no reason, is still [00:13:00] susceptible to, you know, being incarcerated at much higher rates, to being looked at if their name happens to sound black, for being passed over, there's just so many things that we still need to fix.
Sarah: [00:13:18] In particular, I think the part of your perspective that a lot of people in our audience will connect with is the conflict you felt on your journey as you raise these children, as you sort of abandoned the color blind narrative within the context of a Christian community.
And, you know, I think you write so beautifully about where the service of that community, you know, fed you for awhile and then where it stopped feeding you and where there was. Um, real conflict and real trauma. [00:14:00] Yeah. Put on you because of, you know, not meeting the narrative within the church or not following the rules of the church or not following the rules of suffering and grieving or questioning.
So for those, you know, still living in those communities or struggling with disappointment and those communities, what would you say?
Kristen Howerton: [00:14:21] You know, I think that, and this pertains to race, but I think it pertains to so many things in religion. I mean, I'm a therapist. My background is in psychology and there are psychologies that are emerge within faith communities, right?
There are ways of thinking patterns. And one of the patterns that I believe has emerged within Christian Dem, especially evangelical Christian Dem, is this idea that when we go through suffering it's all, you know, working together for the good of God's people. We, you know, we manipulate a scripture for that, that all, you know, all things are gonna work together.
That [00:15:00] all suffering is for God's glory. That we have this God who, anytime he causes suffering, he's really doing it because it'll bring more people to him. So like, yeah, bummer that your baby died, but like, look at all the people who are now you know, following your Instagram account and seeing what a strong Christian you are.
And so now God is glorified through the death of your child, like, which is a terrible theology. It's not accurate. We don't find it in scripture. And it's also a terrible psychology because it's very harmful. It's very harmful to perpetuate this idea that all suffering was put upon us by God. And that all of it has to wrap up in a pretty bow.
And that if you have terrible loss in your life, you need to have a testimony for why that loss was really good at the end of the day. Cause we love testimonies. We'd love testimonies. We'd love to hear the guy stand up and say, I lived under a bridge and I was addicted and then I came out of it and [00:16:00] now I'm great.
Now I'm great. Or we love to hear the testimony of like, I lost my husband and children in a car crash, but God was there for me and now I'm closer to God than ever. But what we don't like to hear is a story of, like, I went through a hardship and now I have post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder and mental health issues and grief.
And I'm sad every day. And nothing good happened from it, which is true for many of us. We've been through a lot of us have been through suffering and you know, the old cliche of what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. I mean, I think what's true is that, which doesn't kill us sometimes gives us a crippling anxiety disorder. Right?
Like sometimes it doesn't make us stronger at all. I mean, I've been through some trauma and like, It didn't make me stronger. It actually made me very susceptible to, you know, to [00:17:00] hypervigilance and panic and all kinds of sensory issues and all kinds of stuff. You know, I lived through the big earthquake in Haiti. Like it did not make me stronger for having been there, it, it really actually had to do a lot of therapy about that.
Sarah: [00:17:23] There's this great moment where you're talking about the women's weekly moms group at your church and they're talking about like morning routines and quiet time. And you're like, what am I doing here? I'm having panic attack and mastitis and intrusive thoughts. And my marriage is suffering and I don't want to talk about morning routines.
And I love this line, you said, but our conversation prompts were based on Christian culture prescriptions, not on vulnerability.
Beth: [00:17:47] Yeah. Yeah, because I think Christians become very uncomfortable with vulnerability that isn't wrapped up in a bow. And I found that to be true in my life. I had a series of bad years [00:18:00] where I had multiple miscarriages.
My husband during that time was hit by a car, had a very long recovery, was in a wheelchair for a long time. I mean, touch and go like. It was a very bad accident, very traumatic to live through as for him, but also as a spouse. And then we, he went to adopt a child, which is supposed to be a very straightforward adoption.
And for three years we lived under the threat of, Oh, guess what a relative emerged and he might be going back to her so maybe he's not your kid after I lost so many pregnancies. So, I mean, this was a good 10 year stretch of, and then I lived with the earthquake in Haiti, a good 10 year stretch of trauma.
Like real trauma and I could feel some, not all, but some of my Christian friends growing uncomfortable with my inability to find God's purpose in the midst of all of it. I mean, they would even say that out [00:19:00] loud, you know, you've just got to F you've got to trust God in all of this, all of this, you know, we don't know where this is leading, but it's God is going to, you know, and it's like, I look back on those years and think, no, I was just experiencing the inevitable suffering of being a human being, maybe a little bit more than some, because that happens to some, because life isn't fair.
Sarah: [00:19:21] I've read your book, Kristen, but more than some, um, I feel comfortable making that objective judgment.
Kristen Howerton: [00:19:26] It's a little more than some but, um, but I mean, I also didn't grow up being bombed in Syria, but you know, there are people living in suffering all over the world and it is a uniquely American religious like phenomenon that we feel the need to wrap everything up because I do think that people living in countries where there is constant hardship, which, I mean, we're actually kind of moving into that kind of a country, but you know, people who live in countries where there is constant violence, constant food insecurity. Those people do not have theologies that say [00:20:00] God's working it all out.
They understand that suffering is a part of life and inevitable. And then we go on mission trips and we meet these people and we go, Oh my gosh, I can't believe how much faith they have in the midst of their hard life. Like I saw Jesus through their eyes, you know, when we patron, but anyway, I think the way that this phenomenon plays out in race is that Christians are also impatient with wanting to immediately get to solution around race and harmony.
Sarah: [00:20:29] Well, that's what I was going to say. You can see that narrative on the conservatives, or you saw it in the RNC. America is the greatest country. We might not be perfect, but we're going to wrap the conclusion is we are still the best and if you don't think that, then you're the problem. Yeah. You don't have enough faith in America.
I mean, literally you could just swap the words out of America for God and that conversation goes the same way, your faith you're just, you know, you need to work on your faith is really the problem here. You don't have enough faith in America and that's why you see all these. That's why you're suffering. That's why you see all these problems.
[00:21:00] Kristen Howerton: [00:20:59] Absolutely. And I mean, I'll give an anecdote of, of how I think Christians respond to the racial reckoning that ran right now. Like not long after George Floyd's death a local church. And I know they meant well, but they decided to have a unity March. And so the unity March, they gathered the cops and the sheriffs and Christians, and they asked people to write only positive signs.
Right. So signs about love, signs about unity. And it's like, okay, I love that idea, but we're not there yet. Right now what the conversation we're happening right now is disproportionate violence against black people by police. And so if we jump to a unity March, we haven't solved the actual problem, which is that black people are shot by police at much higher rates.
Like if we jumped to unity, we still have the same problem. [00:22:00] We're just singing kumbaya over the same problem. And so I, you know, I think that's where all of us, this isn't just a strictly Christian phenomenon. I mean, we also see it in, we see it in new age circles. We see it in, you know, the positivity movement.
But I mean, with this race thing, we cannot jump to unity and harmony until we have addressed the real issues, the prison to pipeline issues, the redlining in schools, the violence of and bias in, in law enforcement. We have to address these issues first, before we're doing a unity march.
Sarah: [00:22:36] Here's where I think it's really hard. So what does that mean? What does that look like? And I'm thinking that this aligns nicely with your experience of trans racial adoption. Go with me here and tell me if I'm way off base. Okay. So we talk a lot about mothering as a good metaphor for [00:23:00] what the country needs right now in the face of these reckonings, in the face of all this work to do, because if you are a person of faith and you're uncomfortable with what's going on and you don't want just to wrap a good, a nice, pretty bow on it, which none of us should want to do, and you want to work on it, but you are also a person of faith and you believe in a call to love and a call to, and a call to unity and a belief that we are all children of God.
And we are all connected. What does that look like, and how we talk about action, how we talk about our fellow citizens, including the citizens who are dangerous and harmful. I think that's really difficult. And I'm thinking about the moment in your book, where you opened a door in my brain and you talked about your son can be coming back from Haiti and you called it an attachment injury, which I never heard before in all my reading about adoption, you know, and attachment disorders. And I just thought the phrasing attachment injury was so strong because it says there's [00:24:00] something here.
It's not permanent, but you talk about how hard it was, how this was not just a normal challenging of boundaries with this person loves you, but they were pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing and how you showed up like, I felt like what you described there was love as a verb, like a very powerful, demanding accountability verb. And I think it has some lessons for how we can think about, you know, people in our own family who are pushing and pushing and pushing us, who we love, but who are, I mean, are in some sort of pain for better or for worse, or are harming others out of their pain.
Like, I've just, I, I thought I saw that as such a powerful example of when we say love is an action and it's not a condoning, we're not condoning anything. This is not what we're doing. We are holding to account through a position of love. And I think that's what a lot of us are trying to figure out how to do in this [00:25:00] moment. And it's really, really hard.
Kristen Howerton: [00:25:02] Yeah, it's really hard and, and change is not going to happen without a lot of hard, you know? And I think I'll say this. I mean, when we're talking, you know, I think it's important to be clear that the way that white people and the way that black people address the racism that continues to happen, it's going to be different.
Sarah: [00:25:23] Right?
Kristen Howerton: [00:25:25] Yeah. And. I personally feel strongly that white racism is a problem for white people to fix. We are the people that are in the room, we're the people that are having the conversations and we have access to talking with people that black people don't. And we also, and this is, this is systemic racism embodied. We have credibility that black people don't. That's not right. Yep.
Sarah: [00:25:52] And we don't want retraumatization. I'm not looking to fix this problem through the retraumatization of people already suffering underneath it.
[00:26:00] Kristen Howerton: [00:25:59] Absolutely. Absolutely. They're exhausted, which is why this is our job. Um, and so I, I think one thing I would say is that it's really important for white people to push back against this idea of like, I can't even talk to people about this, or, well, I'm just going to refuse to talk to people about this, because if I refuse to talk to the people in my circle that are struggling, um, with these concepts and are perpetuating harmful concepts.
You know, so, you know, the guy that I knew from college or the friend from high school or the uncle or the relative who is consistently posting anti-black things. And let me, let me say what I mean by anti-black when they are consistently posting things that paint black, all black people as violent.
All black people as rioters and looters, or when they're consistently posting things that are justifying the [00:27:00] deaths of unarmed black men. Right. So when, you know, and we know we all know these people, the people who are getting focused on like, well, so, and so had a criminal record.
Doesn't matter, nobody with a criminal, guess what? I have a criminal record. So should I be shot at a traffic stop because I have a criminal record from something I did that was dumb in my teens? So this, you know, these ideas are perpetuated and we all have friends that are doing it well, you know, black person Candace Owens said that, you know, this was a justified killing and, and they're just sharing this confirmation bias of well it's okay that these black people were killed or it's not that big of a deal or well, black people, you know, we know those people, we all know those people.
And if I decide, I refuse to engage with this person, then what I'm doing as a white person is I'm, I'm letting a disease run amok with my own people. So [00:28:00] I do think it's the job of white people to get other white people in check. It shouldn't be black people's jobs. This is an inside job. This is an inter community problem that we've got to address.
And so I think we need to keep talking. Um, and then I think we need to keep at the same time listening and, you know, really listening to black people really coming alongside, not swooping in, but coming alongside and asking, how can I help and being you know, humble enough to say, I'm not the savior here.
I'm here to listen. I'm here to amplify. I'm here to support. But at the same time, when we're in all white circles and there's not a black person who has access, whether that's our Thanksgiving table or at a Bible study where there's not a black person present, then we need to be that voice being like saying nothing is really complicit.
[00:29:00] Sarah: [00:29:00] But saying it with a. I think there's a spectrum like not saying you can't say nothing and you also can roll in self-righteous and harden those opinions that you want to undo. I think that's, what's so hard. I think that's, that's the hard, but again, like as, and I don't just mean mothers, if you are a mother, I mean, we have all mothered, right?
I think that we have all parented in certain scenarios where we know how you, you get that voice you get that posture of I am saying this because I love you. And I know it is hard to hear, but it is time for you to hear it. And I think that that posture is like really this, this quote unquote soft skill we all need right now.
Kristen Howerton: [00:29:46] Yes. I think it's that. And then I also think it's really important to try to find common ground and start from there. So instead of, instead of, you know, saying you're a racist and here's the reasons you're racist, [00:30:00] just start with, okay where do we have something in common? Do you care about black people?
That's a good place to start because few people will say I don't care about black people. Yeah. Even, even our most ignorant relative, if we said, do you care about black people? You know, our all lives matter friends would say, yes, I care about black people. And then you can start from there. Okay. We both care about black people.
We're coming from the same place. And then you can start to address some of their beliefs that may not look like caring for black people. Instead of saying leading with you're a racist and here's why. Now do I think they're racist? Yes. I think a lot of people are embodying systemic racism, but it's not a good place to start a conversation from because it doesn't change hearts and minds and changing hearts and minds is what we need to do be about right now.
Sarah: [00:30:55] Okay. Speaking of that, I think now we need to lean on your experience in [00:31:00] psychology as a licensed marriage and family therapist.
You've writing recently about the heartbreak witnessing so many within your, like the Christian community you grew up in, around really falling down the Q Anon, hashtag save the children rabbit hole. And you know, it's clear that this is fulfilling a psychological need people have. Yeah. And I think so many of us and so many in our community are really struggling with like, what do I do?
How do I, because you can't reason them out of it, these conspiracy theories work because you can't prove a negative. And so like that is, we all have tried that it's not working. And so how are you [00:32:00] thinking. Through, have you tried tackling this with any people close to you? Do you see anything working, literally anything at all people will take?
Kristen Howerton: [00:32:09] First. I want to step back and look at the psychology of Q Anon because I think there is one and I think it's, I think there's two things going on with Q Anon. One is that, I mean, we've seen a rise of it since the pandemic started. And I don't think that that is a coincidence.
I think that number one, people are looking for explanations for suffering because we, you know, our world is suffering right now. And this pandemic for many people, especially Americans is the first time that you know, that something really scary has happened for some people. I mean, my generation, you know, for sure we haven't lived through a war, we haven't lived through a pandemic like, you know,
[00:33:00] Sarah: [00:33:00] I mean we have, but it was on TV. I mean, so we lived through 9/11, but it was on TV for most of that.
Kristen Howerton: [00:33:07] Yeah. And it didn't personally affect, you know, and it was a one time. And the thing with 9/11 was. you know, there also seemed to be a quick resolution. Now it wasn't a real resolution, but you know, we know that, remember the mission accomplished.
Remember that like, Yeah, it's done. You know,
Sarah: [00:33:29] I felt like somebody's hands were on the wheel. Like it
Kristen Howerton: [00:33:31] There was a clear. Yes. Yeah. There was a clear enemy. We had a clear enemy and we had a clear explanation for why that was happening. Right. So with this pandemic, it's very nebulous. We don't know, you know, there's not a person we can point to while though many people are pointing to China, but you know, there's not a clear enemy.
There's a lot of unrest going on and people are looking for an answer. They're looking for some hidden agenda, something that's happening. So there's that. But I think the second [00:34:00] thing that's going on is that you have a lot of people who are, who are psychologically entrenched in their political party.
And this is no longer about size of government. This is no longer about right like all of the things that we learned about political parties in our civics and economic classes like this. This is no longer about philosophy of politics. People are entrenched in nationalism within their political party like almost. Well, I think actually sometimes higher than their own religion. And they're also very intertwined.
Sarah: [00:34:37] Well, and it's so identity driven. Identity is so powerful.
Kristen Howerton: [00:34:40] So it is, it is. And so I think there are a lot of Americans who identify as Christian Republicans so deeply. And now you have a president who is basically living out that this marriage between [00:35:00] Christianity and re you know, Republican, like he's doing it wrong. Like he's, he is not embodying those values. So what do they have to do to keep supporting Trump? They have to find some fairy tale that explains to them. Oh, actually Trump is secretly taking down child sex predators.
This is the only way they can make sense of their continued support of Trump, because it doesn't make sense. There's so much cognitive dissonance for a Christian to continue to support Trump who lies, who has been unfaithful, who embodies zero Christian tenets.
And so the way that they can keep supporting him. Because if they don't keep supporting him, then their whole identity is dismantled because their politics are so wrapped up with their, with their faith and they can't let go of it. They can not let go because that feels so unsafe. That [00:36:00] feels like their whole world and their whole belief system would unravel.
And so they have clung to this idea that Trump is on a secret mission and then the secret mission is against who? The worst that we can think of. What's worse than child sex predators? What's worse than a sex trafficker, nothing. So if I believe that Trump is appointed to take down sex traffickers, that lets me keep being Christian and keeping Republican and keep supporting Trump without all the cognitive dissonance.
Sarah: [00:36:33] Right. Right.
I mean, it's definitely meeting a need. There's no doubt about that. And that I think that helping those, those stars align in their favor, but when it's so powerful like that, if we feel just, so what you're talking about before, if we feel called to disrupt people's narratives to push those uncomfortable truths, to call them to account because we love them, but you're up against that incredible psychological instinct [00:37:00] to fight. Confirmation bias is so powerful and cognitive dissonance is so powerful. And so like, how can we do that with people in our lives, who we love that are, we feel like are, are falling into that trap. It feels impossible. It really does.
Kristen Howerton: [00:37:15] Yeah. I mean, I think it looks like a lot of really hard conversations and I think it looks like us actually learning about what all this is.
You know, learning and understanding what their belief structure and belief system is. And then learning what the talking points are, you know, learning how to learning, how to really push in and push back. And again, this is where we can start from what do we have in common. And so if I'm talking to someone who is entrenched in Q Anon, what we have in common is sex trafficking is terrible.
Yes. We all believe that sex trafficking is terrible. So let's talk about how we solve that. Right? And like, what are the things that we can do to solve that? And then you [00:38:00] can keep in the conversation going back to, but we both want to solve sex trafficking. Right. But you know what the temptation becomes is like to make fun too, you know, I mean to joke about Wayfair, you know, to like, to scoff, to poke holes in absurdity. Right. But it's like, if we can start with what we have in common, then the conversation can, can be more productive.
Sarah: [00:38:24] You know what I mean? It feels like to be too from the, like, I think there's like a real racial angle to this, that it felt like this a community that was constantly having slavery and the existence of slavery used as a talking point against them rightly, you know what I mean? Like that the Confederate flag, cultural Wars and this idea of systemic racism that was built on this foundation of slavery. And it feels very much like, well, you're you care about slavery hundreds of years ago, I care about slavery now.
You know what I mean? It felt, it feels like this moral trump card, like this ethical, I'm still a good [00:39:00] person. I care about slavery, but I care about people in slavery right now. And you only care about that slavery from hundreds of years ago. It feels very much like this, you're telling me I'm not a caring person. I just care in a different way than you, even though I really, you know.
Because that's what be, you know, people want to believe themselves to be good people who are opposed to slavery and care about children. And so after, you know, This need to check those boxes, this fills that need. So you don't actually, you can still support Trump and family separation at the border, and you can still want to fly the Confederate flag, even though it represents slavery to people because you, you still care about those things just in different ways.
Beth: [00:39:38] Totally. Yeah. And it's tough because it's, they care about it in different ways and in ways that are a little bit fantastical, like, you know, if we really look at sex trafficking and who is at risk of sex trafficking, it's immigrant children, it's impoverished children. And it's, you know, it's not a mom in [00:40:00] target who is going to have her children stolen.
Like that's not where people are trafficked from. In fact, I was actually doing some research on this because I keep seeing this come up of like mothers telling stories of like,
Sarah: [00:40:15] This guy was following me. Yes. I see so many of those.
Kristen Howerton: [00:40:20] So many, and my kids were almost sex trafficked and it's like, okay, there's actually, there's actually zero examples of a child being pulled into sex trafficking from a store. And if you really think about it, it's the worst possible place. There's closed caption TVs. Someone would have to get out of the store. Like that's not where children are stolen from and where, what, what we know to be true from facts is that most children are trafficked by someone they know.
Sarah: [00:40:49] Yeah. And they're vulnerable, right?
Kristen Howerton: [00:40:51] Yeah. And most traffickers are not looking for your kid in target. What they're looking for is a kid on social media who [00:41:00] is clearly living in a foster home. Like they're actually looking at that. And so when we look at child trafficking, what we really need to be looking at is what are we doing with kids at the border? Because kids have been gone missing after being separated from their families.
We need to look at how are we taking care of kids in foster care and following up, like, those are the real vulnerable kids. And so I think a lot of it is just putting this out to people. Like, I really care about this too. Have you heard the traffickers are really going after foster kids? You know, like just giving, sharing information in a way that is we're aligned. We're on the same team here. Have you heard this new information, you know? Yeah.
Sarah: [00:41:46] Well, thank you for coming on and talking with us about these overwhelming topics, especially from such a personal perspective in your personal experience, we really appreciate it.
Kristen Howerton: [00:41:55] Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah: [00:41:56] And where can people find you online?
Kristen Howerton: [00:41:58] Well, my website is [00:42:00] KristenHowerton.com and I'm on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook at, @Kristen Howerton.
Sarah: [00:42:07] Love it. And your book is Rage Against the Minivan.
Kristen Howerton: [00:42:10] Yep. And that's at Amazon and target and pretty much everywhere books are sold.
Sarah: [00:42:15] Thank you, Kristen.
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