This story originally ran in November 2018. Read on for an update from the author on her son.
The days on either end of Thanksgiving are the nation’s busiest when it comes to travel. When my husband and I decided to spend the holiday with my family in Kansas, we knew that the flights from New York would be packed, that the airport security lines would be long, that everything would be slower and more frustrating because of the volume of fellow travelers. My husband, a frequent business flyer, dreaded the chaos of being trapped on a plane with a bunch of screaming babies. Our son, who is 12, was mostly concerned about whether we’d get an airplane with a screen so he could watch a movie.
As for me, being a sap for holidays, I tried to focus on the fact that even the most aggravatingly befuddled person in front of me at the kiosk was likely going to see loved ones. So what if he couldn’t figure out how to insert his credit card, or she didn’t know about taking off shoes? Their presence in the busy airport was a sign of love ― the enduring bonds of which prompt so many of us to make a pilgrimage to that place we call home.
For inspiration, I replayed the airport scenes from “Love Actually” in my mind, imagining the Beach Boys singing “God Only Knows” as random passengers hug their dear ones. After all, I thought, the only thing that matters ever ― and which at their best, holidays remind us of ― is our connection to family, or the chosen family of friends, that feeling of warmth, safety and belonging that all human beings crave.
What I hadn’t prepared myself for was my child having to sit next to a Trump supporter.
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A little background: My family is multiracial, my son is a person of color and at 12, he’s soaking up knowledge about everything. His obsession in kindergarten was memorizing the names and order of the U.S. presidents. In fourth grade, he fell in love with “Hamilton.” These days, he’s fascinated by politics, if slightly dismayed by each new thing he learns ― and frankly, given what’s going down in the White House right now, I try to shield him from the worst of it. In addition to being a smart kid who likes to talk about politics, my son is friendly and chatty. Even as he sometimes displays a sullen tween attitude to me, he’s reliably courteous and poised with strangers.
So, it wasn’t a shock when my son responded gracefully to a very talkative seatmate on our return flight from Kansas City. My husband had flown back earlier; my son and I were across the aisle from one another. My son’s seatmate was a middle-aged white woman (as am I), who told us she was from Topeka, Kansas, one of the towns my husband grew up in. As we taxied toward takeoff, I put on noise-canceling headphones and tuned out. My son and his seatmate kept talking.
I glanced over once or twice and noticed they remained in conversation. One time I glimpsed a scowl on my son’s face, but I figured if he needed rescuing, he’d try to get my attention.
After we landed, on the way to get our luggage, my son was uncharacteristically quiet. “Mom,” he finally said, “that woman I was talking to? She’s a Trump supporter.”
“Oh yeah? How did that come up?” I asked him.
“I brought up something about Trump, and she said she’d voted for him. Then she said she isn’t really a Republican, she just hated Hillary. But she also said her favorite president was Reagan.”
I didn’t want to tell him that he’d just spoken to the typical white woman of my age and home state. And to be honest, I was kind of bemused he’d met so few Trump fans that he found it noteworthy. Maybe it’s good to get out of our liberal bubble from time to time. After all, aren’t the pundits always saying that our real problem is political polarization, division, an inability to reach across the aisle? My son had met a person who voted for the person our family didn’t vote for, and she was friendly to him, and so wasn’t this a good thing? I mean, David Brooks and all those No Labels people would approve, right?
“When she whispered to me what a great young man I was raising and offered her kudos to me for being his mother, I wanted to ask her what she thought of Trump’s consistent and clear disdain for Black people.”
But that’s not how it felt. The more my son told me about his seatmate, the more I wish I had said something to her. While we waited for our luggage at baggage claim, she came over and whispered to me what a great young man I was raising and offered her kudos to me for being his mother. I wanted to ask her what she thought of Trump’s consistent and clear disdain for Black people. I wanted to tell her about the damage being done to my son’s friends who have gay parents. I wanted to yell at her that a vote for Trump was a vote against finally taking climate change seriously, even now that it’s likely too late. If you like my son, I wanted to say, you should vote for people who will try to make the world better, not worse ― because he, and his generation, will live in it a lot longer than you or I.
“I can’t get that Trump woman out of my head,” my son told me later. “She was so nice in other ways. But she acted like politics is a game, not something that affects real life.”
There’s no more reliable marker of privilege than believing, or pretending to believe, that politics has no impact on real life. As a Black male, my son is growing up to face dangers that his seatmate’s choice of president has increased. He will inherit a world shaped by a man whose core values are rotten. Trump may be incompetent, but he’s been able to do a lot of damage already.
My son said he thought the seatmate was a little embarrassed by her Trump vote. She told him she didn’t want to be judged for it, any more than she wanted to be judged for being from Kansas. And I agree ― nobody should be judged for where they come from. But if there were ever a fair basis on which to judge someone, it’s on the actions they take in situations that affect other people. There’s no more obvious example than voting.
So yes, I do judge her. And I hope she felt something ― maybe a little doubt about her own choices, values and politics. If she liked my son so much, maybe she’ll carry his face and voice in her head a little bit, perhaps when she goes into the voting booth. I’m probably kidding myself that it had any effect on her. But she had an effect on us. My son did the math and realized he’ll be eligible to vote in 2024. If he could register right this second, he would. And I catch myself looking across the aisle at his seatmate and thinking, things are going to change. They have to.
In the seven years since the flight I wrote about here, a lot of things have changed. My son is now 18 — his dad and I just dropped him off for his first year at college. His youthful passion for memorizing the presidents, and for singing along to the Hamilton soundtrack, have receded in a life now filled with other interests and activities. But his interest in politics remains and has grown more sophisticated. He doesn’t agree with me on every issue or on every candidate. And while we both voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election — his first time ever casting a ballot — he was less surprised than I was when Donald Trump was reelected.
I think that’s because we occupy different places in an American society that’s only grown more unequal and dangerous since I wrote about him in 2018. As a young Black man, it’s natural that my son would be more aware of the violence he could easily encounter in cities that Trump has vowed to “clean up” with armed military occupation. As a person just entering college, he’s acutely aware of the broken promises and unraveled safety net his generation will have to make do with. He’s pragmatic and strong-minded because he has to be. The friendly, chatty boy is still a polite and poised young man, but he’ll never be as open to strangers as he was when he was a tween, and while I know that’s part of growing up, it’s hard not to perceive the role our country’s politics have played in this change as well.
We’ll fly to Kansas again in the next few months, whether for a holiday or to take in a Jayhawk basketball game. He’ll likely sit next to a Trump voter again. But while his interaction years ago mostly left him sad and confused, I imagine these days he’s more inclined not to waste his time wondering about their motivations. He’s got his own life to live, and his own votes to cast.
Kate Tuttle is a freelance writer and editor. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere.
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