Today I spent the better portion of my day trying to untangle the circumstances surrounding a classroom incident where some 2nd graders told a classmate that he/she wasn't allowed to come to school anymore because he/she was black. Without going into specifics, one of the interesting aspects was that the targeted student wasn't even black. It is also relevant that only minutes before, the class had just finished reading two children's books about the life of Martin Luther King.
As I mentally synthesize 1) my conversations today with students, parents, and teachers, 2) the illustrations and text of the two MLK books, and 3) my own recent diversity training experience, I come away with one unmistakable conclusion: we adults need to get our collective act together when it comes to talking about race. All of the confusion, hypersensitivity, and avoidance surrounding the topic and language of race that exists in the adult world, is trickling down to blameless children, leaving them in a state of bewilderment and insecurity.
For the purposes of this entry, I want to focus on one simple question: can we adults decide whether we are comfortable with the terms "black" and "white"? On the one hand, one of the MLK books referred to "white kids" and "black kids" throughout. My diversity training (which was facilitated by a black man) purposefully referred to races, cultures, and people as "black" and "white". Many adults are comfortable with the terminology. On the other hand, many adults of various skin colors are decidedly UNcomfortable with those terms and go out of their way to use the somehow-more-appropriate sounding "African-American" and "Caucasian". The second of the MLK books only referred to "African-Americans". On top of all this, I have never witnessed a teacher or parent even attempt to sit down with children and actually match visual images of people with their correct racial identity--we are all afraid or uncomfortable to do so.
Do you see the problem here? As early as kindergarten, children are learning about "black history month" and Martin Luther King--my first grade child has already learned about slavery. We talk in blithe, general terms like "color of our skin" and "colorblind". And yet none of us are taking the time to explain to children what black, white, brown, African-American, Caucasian, Latino, Mexican, Hispanic, Asian-American, and even "American" mean. And it's only because we as adults are not willing to have a dialogue among ourselves about the topic. It is no wonder that in a society that is obsessed about race, our children have no idea what "race" even means.
On behalf of the entire grown up world, I couldn't help but feel a deep sense of regret and shame for each of the children I spoke with today.
Great post! You raise some excellent points. I'm reminded of a Newsweek cover story a year or two ago, "Is Your Baby Racist?" It received negative attention, mostly because of the title, but the article talked about a study that indicated that, at a very young age, children are able to differentiate between races. They notice that people don't look alike. Thus, the study suggested, children need to be taught EXPLICITLY about those differences instead of using more vague and comfortable terms.
ReplyDeleteBut how do we do that when adults are so confused?