This week’s
article summary is Your
Five-Year-Old is Already Racially Biased: Here's What You Can Do About It,
and it appropriately follows our Wednesday faculty meeting topic on stereotyping.
The article
provides some helpful tips to both parents and teachers about how to help young
children avoid the pernicious influence of societal stereotypes.
One a-ha for me from the article was how
early societal stereotypes influence young children.
As we have
discussed, our macro DEI—Diversity, Equity, Inclusion--goal at Trinity is to help our students develop both a positive
sense of self and a sincere care and concern for others.
More specifically, we strive to help our students:
- Be proud of all aspects of their identity
- Feel and demonstrate empathy and inclusion
- Look for commonalities and respect differences
- Resist societal stereotypes
- With Trinity’s foundation, champion for a more equitable and just
world
This article provides some ways in which both parents and us as a
school can help our students avoid accepting societal stereotypes and help to
live in a more just and fair world.
Joe
---------
Fox Chapel Middle
School in Spring Hill, Florida, recently fired a teacher who gave her sixth
graders an assignment asking them to consider how “comfortable” they would be
in the company of various people. Some of the 41 scenarios identified these
“others” in terms of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.
For example:
- Your new roommate is a Palestinian and Muslim
- A group of young Black men are walking toward you on the
street
- The young man sitting next to you on the airplane is an Arab
- Your new suitemates are Mexican
- Your assigned lab partner is a fundamentalist Christian
Many Fox Hill
students and parents were upset. “They’re kids. Let kids be kids. Why are they
asking kids these questions?” one parent wondered. “I just don’t think it’s
something that needs to be brought in school.” Another
parent said: “I just think that sometimes kids are just too young to start that
at this age, and in school.”
Such
sentiments are familiar—and deeply misguided.
In
the United States, a lot of us believe that children, especially white
children, are racial innocents—completely naive, curiously fragile with respect
to the realities of race, or both.
The
truth is that well before their teen years, the vast majority of children are
well aware of prevailing biases, and most kids, of all racial stripes, have
taken on a bunch of their own.
Researchers
have been studying the development of racial and ethnic biases in children for
a long time, and we know quite a bit. We know that within a few months of
birth, babies prefer own-race faces, probably because most are surrounded by
people who look like them. Sometime during the preschool years, however, this
relatively innocent pull toward the familiar morphs into something else.
By
age five, black and Hispanic children show no preference toward their own group
compared to white youngsters. On the other hand, white kids remain strongly
biased in favor of whiteness. By the start of kindergarten, “children begin to
show many of the same implicit racial attitudes that adults in our culture
hold. Children have already learned to associate some groups with higher
status, or more positive value, than others.”
So, with
reference to the doubtless well-meaning parent quoted earlier, the crucial
question isn’t “Why bring issues of racial, ethnic, religious and other kinds
of bias into our schools?” It’s “how do we constructively engage the harmful
biases we know pervade our schools and just about everywhere else? And what can
we do to shape our children’s racial attitudes before and as they emerge?”
In that regard,
research and experience offer some promising guidance to parents, teachers, and
to all of us who care for or about children.
Start early: Let your child know that it’s perfectly okay
to notice skin color and talk about race. Encourage them to ask questions,
share observations and experiences, and be respectfully curious about race.
Realize that you are a role
model to your child: What
you say is important, but what you do—how diverse your circle of friends is,
for example—will probably have an even bigger impact on your child. If he/she
doesn’t attend a diverse school, if you’re able, consider enrolling him in
activities such as sports leagues that are diverse. Choose books, toys, and
movies that include people of different races and ethnicities. Visit museums
with exhibits about a range of cultures and religions.
Let your child see you face
your own biases: We’re
less likely to pass on the biases we identify and work to overcome. Give your
child an example of a bias, racial or otherwise, that you hold or have held.
Share with your child things you do to confront and overcome that bias.
Know and love who you are: Talk about the histories and experiences
of the racial, ethnic, and cultural groups you and your family strongly
identify with. Talk about their contributions and acknowledge the less
flattering parts of those histories as well. Tell stories about the challenges
your family may have faced and overcome.
Develop racial cultural
literacy by learning about and respecting others: Study and talk about the histories and
experiences of groups such as African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans,
Native Americans, and Whites. Be sure your child understands that every racial
and ethnic group includes people who believe different things and behave in
different ways. There is more diversity within racial groups than across them.
Be honest with your child, in
age-appropriate ways, about bigotry and oppression: Children are amazing at noticing
patterns, including racial patterns (who lives in their neighborhood versus
their friends’ neighborhoods, for example). Help them make sense of those
patterns, and recognize that bigotry and oppression are sometimes a big part of
those explanations. Be sure your child knows that the struggle for racial
fairness is still happening and that your family can take part in that
struggle.
“Lift up the freedom fighters”:
Tell stories of resistance and resilience: Every big story of racial oppression is also a story
about people fighting back and “speaking truth to power.” Teach your child
those parts of the story too. Include women, children and young adults among
the “freedom fighters” in the stories you tell.
Teach your children to be
“upstanders” for racial justice: Help your child understand what it means to be, and how to be, a
change agent. Whenever possible, connect the conversations you’re having to the
change you and your child want to see, and to ways to bring about that change.
Plan for a marathon, not a
sprint: Make race talks
with your child routine. Race is a topic you should plan to revisit again and
again in many different ways over time. It’s okay to say, “I’m not sure” or
“Let’s come back to that later, okay?” But then be sure to come back to it.
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