My strongest concern is that she has some anxiety issues and may well get worried that this will happen again. She has expressed repeated concern that the African American kids at her school are going to feel scared by what they have learned about slavery and so on--"They might think it's going to happen again. I don't think that's good for little kids to have to worry about that."
Hmm. I think that sounds a bit similar to my dd, then. Dd found some solace in better understanding how this could have happened and learning about what we have learned from this so that we can try to avoid this in the future. We saw it as a good learning experience about the mindset and political circumstances that can lead to genocide and how countries can be structured to explicitly allow disobedience when you disagree with the government. We discussed the checks and balances in our government, the dangers of overturning rights even when you strongly disagree with the minority whose rights are being protected, etc.
It helped that dd has seen in action policies that impinge on the rights of a minority being fought. For instance, my employer (a health care system) implemented a mandatory vaccination policy for influenza that didn't allow religious exemptions unless sanctioned by an approved cleric. As a vegan myself, I have always declined this vaccine as it contains chick kidney cells, is grown in eggs, etc. I successfully fought the policy using legal case studies and EEOC policy. They still get 95% of the employees vaccinated, but those of us with approved religious/moral objections don't have to get it and didn't lose our jobs.
I guess that where I'm going is that I try to show dds not only how bad things could have happened in the past, but also how we can avoid having them happen in the future and empower them to feel like they can make changes to things that infringe on the rights of others. That seems to help them feel better about sensitive topics than might just avoiding them.
