“And how are the children?” It’s a common greeting of the Masai tribe in Africa. Hang around long enough in the education world and you’ll likely bump into someone for whom it’s a personal mantra, a type of secular proverb. 

This proverb was the second thing I thought of Wednesday morning as I scrolled through election results on my phone. The first? The morning following the 2016 election when I walked into my 8^th grade homeroom to greet my class of Black and Brown students. 

Then, as now, Donald Trump was elected president. Those first moments with my students in 2016 are forever burned into my memory. The stares. The questions. The disappointment and anger. The sense that this country, like it had before in so many ways big and small, was saying one more time to them, “I am not made for you.”

And so these first two thoughts that confronted me (the proverb and the memory) have stayed with me all week. They will likely haunt me these next four years just as they did for the four years after Trump’s first election and just like they did for the four years after Joe Biden’s election in 2020.

Elections have consequences. Oftentimes their consequences are harshest for those who have no say in the matter. Like my 8^th graders back in 2016. 

Another question has been bubbling in my mind this past week. “Who are we voting for?” I mean that not in the sense of which candidate or which political party. I mean it in the sense of “who do we take into account when we cast a vote.” I do not blame anyone who prioritizes self-interest at the ballot box. But if elections have consequences, I do not think it is enough for us to only consider ourselves. Our children. Our families. Our neighborhood. We ought to consider more than ourselves.

We must consider all the children.

Of course, the reactions from my students are only part of the story. Plenty of students responded differently back in 2016. Plenty of them responded differently last week. Meaning: They are excited. They are happy. They feel affirmed by such an outcome.

Perhaps I am naïve, but I believe that it is possible for our country to be a place where every student is afforded dignity and opportunity. I don’t think it’s inevitable that a particular election outcome leaves millions of students feeling unseen, forgotten, left out, or denigrated. Or as if this country is not safe for them both existentially and literally.

Maybe all that was inevitable in this election. But I refuse to believe that it is our destiny as a country. A series of choices over the past few hundred years got us here. A series of different choices might actualize a different future.

We must consider all the children.

The traditional response to the opening proverb is to say, “All the children are well.” I cannot offer such a response today. I could not guarantee such a response had Harris won this election. To be fair, I couldn’t offer one at any point during Biden’s term in office either. 

Do not mistake this as me thinking there’s an equivalency between the dangers or failings of America’s two political parties. There are gradations. Windows of opportunity. This is what I mean: Some night skies have more stars than others, even if both are dark.

I am under no illusion about whom these parties prioritize when push comes to shove. It is not, and never has been, the Black and Brown students in my 8^th grade class. And by prioritize I do not mean favor unfairly. I mean see as equal. As deserving. As fully human. 

We have so far yet to go.

So I wake up each day and do the work that I do because I desperately hope that one day, if someone seriously asked me, “And how are the children?” That I could genuinely reply, “All the children are well.” 

I can’t say it today. 

But the hope and the possibility that I might say it someday will come back to me the next time I vote. Because every time I do, I am back in my classroom the morning after the 2016 election. Wishing I had taken the day off. Knowing so many students cannot take a day off from living in a country that is hostile to their equality, their dignity, their very existence.

I will always have to answer to those students. 

In ancient Egyptian religion, the passage to the afterlife is marked by having your heart weighed against the feather of the goddess Ma’at. If the heart is heavy, weighed down by misdeed, the person’s soul is consumed by Ammut, the god of the underworld, rather than be allowed to pass into paradise.

I need not wait for death for such judgment. I faced it that day in my classroom as my students collectively tried to gauge the heaviness of my heart in relation to their personhood. Had I voted for Trump? No. Was I to blame for his election? In part. Had the world that contained their possible futures just lurched in an irredeemable direction? I did not know, but I worried.

No night sky is without its stars. But as I said, some skies are darker than others.

Voting is just one thing we do in life. It is miniscule in the grand scheme of our entire lives. A moment that gives way to all we might do besides. Yet it has consequences. It weighs something. 

I will always have to answer to those students. When I arrive at the end of my days, I hope my heart is an answer, a storehouse for all that I have done. I hope it’s light. Light as a feather.