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New York, 10:07 PM
Wed Nov 11
72 posts in the last 24 hours
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09/09/09
09/09/09
But when you are honestly proposing to instill guilt in a whole class of children something is very wrong either with your race relations or your overly-liberal tendancies. Children need confidence to grow up happy. Not guilt. By all means help minorities, let's not punish the majority to achieve that. Not as kids, anyway.
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I doubt the kids actually feel "guilt" the way an adult would, mostly because it doesn't seem to be treated like "oh my god, all you little white children are exactly like slave owners!" It's just pointing out that this country has an extremely problematic racial history, and as white people, we need to continuously question our privilege. The younger that starts the better.
09/09/09
This, this is what needs to be done to white kids. They need to be told about the history of how their race got to be in power/in control (you know, slavery, rape, both literal and figurative, of a country and it's people, murder, etc.). Usually, this is what they lack and what leads them (as a group) to grow up with such a huge superiority complex/god complex that blinds them to the realities of racism, prejudice, inequalities, and white privilege. You wouldn't even need to guilt them if they were truthfully taught American history. That would be enough for anyone. As it is, I don't think this will ever happen because, I guess, people don't like hearing about the atrocities that people of their own race have done. People will always turn a blind eye just so they won't have to hear or bear discomfort when faced with racism/race. That's the only explanation that I can come up with that explains why white parents (sorry for the generalization) don't like talking to their kidsies about racism.
09/09/09
I would stop short of saying "knock down their glorified view of white people". I don't think we should diminish anyone's race or its value. But rather, show that no race's history in this country is independent unto itself. We are all connected in our successes, and our failures.
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There has to be a way to discuss racial politics and all that without blaming kids. That seems like a cognitive dissonance that they aren't going to be capable of in preschool.
09/09/09
I wonder if the "racist baby" survey they looked at multi-racial kids as well. My son identifies himself as Mexican-Irish American, and his best buddy two doors down is Black/Romanian, and his other friend is Mexican/Libyan. Do those kids have different perceptions?
09/09/09
Although oftentimes I think it can also be broken down by their parents' gender...I can distinctly remember being slightly weirded out by Black women as a very young toddler because in my experience (having a Korean mom) women-people were supposed to look Asian and Black women looked like my dad but weren't male. That's all just part of getting oriented to the world. There's no reason parents should be uncomfortable teaching their children how to figure that stuff out. It's not as complicated as folks try to make it.
09/09/09
I don't want to be ASHAMED of being white. I'm not SORRY for it -- I can't HELP it, any more than any other person who was born any other color. I resent being told that I should feel GUILT about my skin color when I have no control over it. I'm proud of to be Jewish, too, but above all I'm proud to be AMERICAN.
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And honestly, I generally find the reaction that white people are somehow being asked to feel guilty or ashamed for things they personally didn't do defensive. It might suck that though I personally never owned slaves, my race due to my skin color is associated with it. But it's not quite the same as the centuries of discrimination faced by poc's in this country, a discrimination I will never have to deal with.
I think I can and should feel guilty that my skin color offers me advantages I didn't earn and that I can't help. I don't feel guilty for my skin color, I feel guilty for what it can represent.
Edited to add: And by guilt here I don't mean that I feel responsible for it on a personal level...but in the general sense. That such things exist in the world and all we can do is try our best to combat them.
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09/09/09
Kids identify with their parents, but they also reject a lot of things that their parents have done. There's no reason they need to bear a personal burden of guilt for their ancestors actions, they just need to know right from wrong.
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It's one thing to address race among relatively privileged white children. Teaching those kids to feel a little guilty makes a little more sense because they are experience the benefits of not only white privilege but class and education privilege, which they "earned" only being born into certain families. But racism is most entrenched in poor, rural white communities. I personally think the best way to address racism in that context is to try and teach the kids to learn to identify with minority kids who face a lot of the same issues regarding access to education and opportunity. Trying to make someone in a depressed economic situation feel guilty about the plight of minorities will likely only stir and reinforce old resentments.
09/09/09
Great book that goes into exactly what you're talking about (I think), "Racial Situations" by Hartigan: [press.princeton.edu]
09/09/09
Maybe this is just poor word choice. Because saying "guilt" but then saying that having their "glorified view of white people" knocked down are two entirely different things.
09/09/09
It was both awesome and hilarious.
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Am I crazy? I thought that's what parents were for?
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Shouldn't teachers already have training in dealing with this BEFORE they start working with pre-schoolers?!
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Why do you need an "expert" to deal with a perfectly healthy three year-old? All you really need is some common sense and discipline. And quite frankly if you do need a specialist they shouldn't be in a classroom yet.
09/09/09
And I know a LOT of people that simply don't have common sense.
And all of those facts aside, even if they don't strictly speaking "need" a specialist, it can't hurt and may help, so why not?
09/09/09
No, there's nothing wrong with having an extra person in the classroom, but as a parent looking for a pre-school, I expect the pre-school to provide adequate (both in numbers and in training) staff for the children in their care.
What I'm getting from this article (and personal experience) is that pre-school teachers are trained in art, reading books, & leading snack time, but not in things like conflict resolution.
Here in Los Angeles pre-school runs around $11k to $13k per year. For that kind of $$ I want properly educated and trained teachers working with my children. If I want a therapist for them, I'l hire one.
09/09/09
09/09/09
"I mean they're not putting the kids on a couch for an hour"
;) !!! Agreed
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I went to pick up the kids, and this little boy (probably 5) comes and asks me "are you their nanny?". And I said "no, I am their Mommy". That should have been the end of it, right? (he has a Hispanic nanny, so I understand). But NOOOOO, he says "no, I don't think so, you look like their nanny". He did not believe that I was their Mom! (he kept pressing the point).
I was appalled at this. Clearly this child is living a a bubble that his parents created, and even in our racially diverse neighborhood they have not exposed him to the fact that people who look like me are not all maids, nannies, gardeners, etc.
09/09/09
Re: Newt's comment, little kids might not be maliciously racist naturally, but most white kids grow up in homes where white privilege is not questioned and parents don't talk about race. So they're going to develop racist thoughts and ideas. And "racist" is not limited to hatefulness.
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09/09/09
My (white) friend has a boy who's about 18 mos. old. He thinks every black guy is Obama. They're a liberal family who lives in DC but their hood is majority white (and rich). The parents support Obama and whenever Obama comes on TV the baby gets really excited. And apparently he smiles at black dudes randomly because "hey that's the guy from TV!"
09/09/09
(OK, I will be good. But definitely they need to know.)
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As others have said, just because kids notice the difference does not mean they are making long-lasting value judgments. When I figured out the difference between boys and girls, I didn't become a lesbian. Or start hating boys-that came later, in say, junior high, when I realized boys sucked.
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09/09/09
Part of the authors' point is that children essentialize when it comes to race: they take preliminary assessment of physical appearance (are they like me or different) and then, over time, begin to attach value to them. That's the hypothesis that frames the red/shirt blue shirt experiments, which argue that kids are more likely, on the whole, to associate, ally, and share with kids who look like them. The other part of the experiment argues that, even if parents don't talk about race, kids still develop racial attitudes, because adults still communicate value by the associations they make and friendships they have with other adults. Parents who talk vaguely about how inequality is bad don't really reach their kids, because kids can't assess something so abstract, particularly if they're not given concrete examples of it. Your example of parents who say "everyone's equal" but don't demonstrate or explain it is right on. They're giving their kids the theory, but not the practice, so kids have a vague conception of "everyone's equal," but they have no idea how to implement it... so they associate with kids who look like them. It's not malicious, they just don't know.