Racist Playground Mom

We love a good label: Organic, Fair Trade, Non-GMO. Or even better: Washed and Ready-to-Eat or Just Heat and Serve! If it helps us avoid microplastics, whining hungry children, or unnecessary labor, we’re all in.

Then there are the annoying mom labels, which we cannot begin to list in full. They include: Boy Mom, Tiger Mom, Almond Mom, Wine Mom, Crunchy Mom, Silky Mom, Smother Mother, Cool Mom, and many, many more. To be clear, we think this is really dumb, even if everyone around us constantly, endlessly, tells us that we fit the Cool Mom label.

But the mom-label industrial complex isn’t just annoying—it’s profitable. Mom labels are divisive, so they dilute power among women while strengthening the systems that profit from divisiveness: namely, the patriarchy. Meanwhile, feminism is gasping for air under the weight of curated motherhood personas that are duking it out with glittery wine thermoses in hand.

And now we have a very clear real-life case study in this. This week in “The Bulwark,” Tim Miller, a never-Trumper and former communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, and his colleague Will Sommer bring us a new and shocking label: The Racist Playground Mom.

The name stems from an incident in which a mom at a playground, Shiloh Hendrix, was caught on video calling a child the N-word. You might reasonably assume that Hendrix was shamed and cancelled following this incident, and of course, by many viewers, she was. On the other hand, a huge group of her “supporters” began fundraising in her defense via GiveSendGo, the crowdfunding site known for its support of right-wing extremist causes. They did this in the name of cancelling cancel culture, if that twisted knot isn’t too much to wrap your head around. As we write, Hendrix’s “cause” has now raised over $750,000, and this week, “The Daily Wire” commentator, Matt Walsh, said that he hopes Hendrix raises at least half a million dollars more.

You might be thinking, “Have we lost our fucking minds?” So are we, and the answer seems to be a resounding “Yes.” The math is not mathing and the logic is not logic…ing. At this point, Racist Playground Mom is making us yearn for the simplicity of a Hot Mess Express t-shirt and a Rosé All Day kitchen decal. And yet, those terms might be where it all started.

Anyway, Happy Mother’s Day weekend! We hope you get to crawl into a cave, take a nap, and wake up to discover that this was all just an extremely weird, scary dream.