- What other things get in accidents besides cars?
- Why do we have accidents?
- Why is the little bird fighting the big bird (watching this unfold in the sky above us)?
- Why don't big kids turn into babies?
- Why is my Black baby actually brown (referring to the baby doll with her in the car)?
- Why didn't we build our house?
- How did they build Zingerman's?
- Why does the sun make us warm?
Monday, May 17, 2010
"Why?"
Here's a sampling of the questions that Maia asked (and we discussed) in a ten-minute car ride from downtown to home this morning:
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3 comments:
Oh man... The one that sticks out to me, there, is the one about race: why do we call that skin-color "black", when it is so clearly not black? Why do we call ourselves white, when we are so clearly not white?
How on earth do you answer that, for a kid Maia's age? Because there's not even really a good answer for ADULTS. (An adult version of the same question: consider the phrases "people of color" and "colored people". Why is one OK, but the other is not?)
And I fixate on this little moment, this little 3.5-year-old's question, because - for some reason - I imagine that the true disentanglement of this crazy quintessentially American knot of racial tension and confusion and fear might have to start with little kids. Little kids don't give a crap about skin color or race or ethnicity, they don't have any positive or negative associations with the way people look or the way people dress. Differences may register as differences, but they don't have values associated with them. We put all of that into kids, over time, often totally by accident.
So... how do we NOT put that into them? How do we allow them to continue in their state of non-judgment? Is it possible?
(Just offering a little opportunity for discussion, if you're in the mood...)
Ooooh, Jo, this is challenging stuff. That's the question that stuck out for me, too, and it's one of many that she's had about racial and ethnic differences in the last few months.
Here's a jumping-off point:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/214989
The book NurtureShock was a revelation for me due largely to the chapter on race. It was really eye-opening. One of the main themes that I gathered from that chapter was this: kids absolutely DO register differences as such, and they also seem to develop in-group preferences quite early on. It's a part of the massive amount of categorizing that's going on in a toddler's brain. I mean, Maia hasn't had any exposure to a school culture in which her peers might articulate racial or ethnic biases, but I have no doubt that she's carrying some of them around with her at this moment. I assume it, because that's what the research suggests I should do, and I go from there.
So, the take away is this: I don't have any choice but to talk about it, directly and explicitly. If you read that Newsweek article, the conlcusion is very direct: parents really must tackle these things head-on, and not merely address them in "everyone's equal" terms. That's too diffuse and fuzzy to make sense to a young child. And it's white parents who are most likely to NOT talk about it, thus giving their children no guidance as they begin to negotiate the biases that they will undoubtedly encounter in school settings.
This is tough stuff--what do you think?
I think it's really hard to know how to talk to kids about race because we adults haven't figured out how to talk about it, among ourselves. Yes, even we liberal adults - we're just as mucked-up about it as conservatives are, except from the opposite perspective. We all have our narratives, our assumptions, our expectations; we all have our identities at stake. Where is the truth, in all of this? A truth that you can feel good about passing on to a child?
It's easy enough to say that a parent should be direct and explicit, but what does that mean?
I thus duck the question and pop it back: How do you field Maia's questions about race? How have you responded?
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