When I first heard the N-word being slung around by young Black people the way women use "bitch" as a self-referential badge of bad-assery, or call their best friends a female dog in heat, I cringed. Our generation worked to obliterate the terms; the next worked to "reclaim" them in an unnecessary gesture of defiance and false bravado.

White kids saw this, and started emulating their favorite celebs. They didn't all learn it at home. (I'm not defending the Bidens, just sharing an observation.) Long before my kids were old enough to know what the "Holocaust" was, the phrase "That's so Jewish" was spreading like wildfire through middle and high schools. White boys were trying to "talk ghetto" imitating Black kids' speech patterns - and it was not usually MEANT by them to be racist; they thought it made them sound "cool."

I nipped it in the bud, here at home. And then, on a trip to D.C., had both kids LINGER through the exhibits at the Holocaust Museum. And we TALKED - about that, and about other forms of racism. About the horrible things humans have done to other humans throughout history. Gone were any flippant, glib, insouciant racist slurs.

It's not enough to say that a kid does or doesn't learn racism at home. That's where they have to start UNlearning it. And not just in their own homes - in their friends' homes, too. And school. And community. It really does take a village.