Unschooling and Intolerance
<alanabweber@...>
Joyce Fetteroll
How do I communicate that something is completely and unequivocally WRONG
Sandra Dodd
Ali Zeljo
-=-"I like living in Canada because there are more white people than brown people". I told him I don't think that's even true-=-
I have a four, almost five year old son who has made a few big claims similar to this. One recent one was "I hate all womens". I can see how your son's seemingly racist comment triggered you, but I am guessing his young brain was working hard to figure out something about the world around him- and didn't mean his comment as deeply as an adult would. Perhaps he was thinking of a particular situation he encountered where the colors of skin matched up with his statement. One way that children learn is through experimenting with generalizations- testing them out, seeing how accurate they are, which situations make them false, etc.
With a little questioning, I was able to get more information from my son and realized that he was thinking about a few unpleasant interactions he had had with mothers who had visited our home over the past week or so. And really it served as a reminder for me to be more vigilant and helpful when another mother is interacting with him. I'm confident that since then, he has already experienced plenty of good interactions with women and thus his "I hate womens" generalization is already dissipated.
In your family's situation, with you having brown skin and your son having light skin- skin color may be something your son is really thinking about. He may be trying to figure out if he can make any generalizations based on skin color. If it were me, I'd want to encourage as much discussion and observation as possible. I'd want him to feel safe coming to me with his comments or questions. And it would be important to trust in his inherent goodness, despite exploring the darker side of some controversial issue such as racial profiling.
Ali
<kkissoyan@...>
While this isn't specific to unschooling, I do think that the research on young kids and race is helpful to review and understand. There's a really interesting chapter in Nurtureshock on this. (if you aren't familiar with the book, I found it to be an engrossing and engaging read:
http://www.amazon.com/Nurtureshock-Everything-Thought-Children-ebook/dp/B002LHRLO8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380037158&sr=1-1&keywords=nurture+shock )
if you want to skip the book, here are a few articles by the authors that touch on their studies re: children and race:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/09/04/see-baby-discriminate.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/nurture-shock/2009/09/11/is-discussing-race-with-a-3-year-old-too-young.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/nurture-shock/2009/09/07/the-white-nonwhite-gap-in-racial-acceptance.html
there are many people here on this list who are far more adept at parsing out the unschooling approach to this than I am, but hopefully this information will give you some more food for thought, and I'm curious to hear what others think of the research and the authors' interpretation of the data. obviously, the third article is about school children and may not be applicable to unschoolers at all, but the first two, I think, can be brought into an unschooling conversation.
best,
Kimberley
---In [email protected], <azeljo@...> wrote:-=-"I like living in Canada because there are more white people than brown people". I told him I don't think that's even true-=-
I have a four, almost five year old son who has made a few big claims similar to this. One recent one was "I hate all womens". I can see how your son's seemingly racist comment triggered you, but I am guessing his young brain was working hard to figure out something about the world around him- and didn't mean his comment as deeply as an adult would. Perhaps he was thinking of a particular situation he encountered where the colors of skin matched up with his statement. One way that children learn is through experimenting with generalizations- testing them out, seeing how accurate they are, which situations make them false, etc.
With a little questioning, I was able to get more information from my son and realized that he was thinking about a few unpleasant interactions he had had with mothers who had visited our home over the past week or so. And really it served as a reminder for me to be more vigilant and helpful when another mother is interacting with him. I'm confident that since then, he has already experienced plenty of good interactions with women and thus his "I hate womens" generalization is already dissipated.
In your family's situation, with you having brown skin and your son having light skin- skin color may be something your son is really thinking about. He may be trying to figure out if he can make any generalizations based on skin color. If it were me, I'd want to encourage as much discussion and observation as possible. I'd want him to feel safe coming to me with his comments or questions. And it would be important to trust in his inherent goodness, despite exploring the darker side of some controversial issue such as racial profiling.
Ali
Amber Boggs
My son who is now five once looked at me and his father who are both totally blind and very emphatically told us that sighted people were better than blind people and he was glad he was not blind. My initial thought process was similar to yours How in the world have I convinced my son that being blind is inferior to being cited? What did I do to give him this impression. But when I thought about it for a second, I realized that he is just making statements trying to understand his world and trying to engage us in a conversation about blindness and non- blind individuals. It wasn't really about who he thought was better and I don't even believe he was really making a judgment call. Instead of getting upset at him, we very calmly asked him why he thought what he thought and allowed him to voice his feelings. I have never heard him mention such things again. I think a part of these type of statements could be the child trying to understand why they are different from their parents. In your case your skin is dark and your sons is light. He is probably trying to understand how that could be, and why he is not the same as you. In my case my kids will probably wonder why they are not blind like me and their father, I think that it is important that we try to help our children understand that being different is okay, and allow them to explore their feelings regarding their differences or similarities.
Tam
I have a four, almost five year old son who has made a few big claims similar to this. One recent one was "I hate all womens". I can see how your son's seemingly racist comment triggered you, but I am guessing his young brain was working hard to figure out something about the world around him- and didn't mean his comment as deeply as an adult would====
I think it's definitely worth bearing in mind that a young child will likely be talking about skin colour or gender at a much simpler level than an adult would be. If I was to say anything about, say, a minority race, I'd have a background knowledge in my mind of history, politics, different cultures, inequality, possibly atrocities... that's all going to contribute to what I think/say. A young child saying something about people with brown skin would maybe be no different to saying something about people who wear blue trousers.
I remember when I was ten or so, our local radio station changed the morning DJ to a woman. I remember the first few days listening to the show felt different and i didn't enjoy it, and I said to my dad that I didn't like female DJs. He was horrified, and said to me that he couldn't believe that, as a girl, I'd said that and thought it was ok and how would I like it if someone said I couldn't do something because I was female? I felt really confused because I hadn't said any of that, and I felt (as I often did at school) that I was being penalised for not knowing something that I'd never been told about. I didn't really know at the time about gender inequality, suffrage, woman's rights, equality in the workplace etc. All I'd felt was the loss of a familiar soundtrack to my journey to school, and had worded it the best way I could articulate at the time.
Tam
Sent from my iPhone
On 24 Sep 2013, at 04:21, Ali Zeljo <azeljo@...> wrote:
-=-"I like living in Canada because there are more white people than brown people". I told him I don't think that's even true-=-
I have a four, almost five year old son who has made a few big claims similar to this. One recent one was "I hate all womens". I can see how your son's seemingly racist comment triggered you, but I am guessing his young brain was working hard to figure out something about the world around him- and didn't mean his comment as deeply as an adult would
Sandra Dodd
<alanabweber@...>
I think this pinpoints the communication gap - Isaac often tells me to look at the 'black guy', who is actually a Chinese man wearing black. I get a little uncomfortable at the idea of someone misunderstanding him, but it's pretty easy for me to get his thought process and not freak out. When he said something that on the surface seemed to be a value judgment, I guess I lost the perspective that he's still so very young.
---In [email protected], <Sandra@...> wrote:-=-My son who is now five once looked at me and his father who are both totally blind and very emphatically told us that sighted people were better than blind people and he was glad he was not blind. My initial thought process was similar to yours How in the world have I convinced my son that being blind is inferior to being cited? -=-Isn' it? I'm guessing you were glad when your child could see.I'm glad I'm not blind. Is that politically incorrect?I'm glad I can hear. Does that belittle the Deaf?I'm glad I can walk. Does that mean I hate para- and quadriplegics?Children shouldn't be expected to take a politically correct stance for the comfort of a parent, especially when they're very young. When they're older, they'll learn tact, but they won't learn it if the parents aren't plainly honest about what it is and why.It's one thing to tell a child that you would have loved him just as much if he couldn't see, or couldn't walk. To tell him that they're the very same thing isn't honest.Sandra
<kaitlinw123@...>
-- A young child saying something about people with brown skin would maybe be no different to saying something about people who wear blue trousers.—
-- I think this pinpoints the communication gap - Isaac often tells me to look at the 'black guy', who is actually a Chinese man wearing black. I get a little uncomfortable at the idea of someone misunderstanding him, but it's pretty easy for me to get his thought process and not freak out. When he said something that on the surface seemed to be a value judgment, I guess I lost the perspective that he's still so very young.--
I agree with the idea in this thread that this child is four years old and, like the stories shared about children saying they don’t like female DJs, don’t like women, are glad they aren’t blind, these statements are not permanent judgments but instead experiments with language and categories, ways to express themselves and identify. And for a four-year-old, skin color may be a category that works like pants color. And I agree that apologizing for freaking out may be the best way open up communication and better understand why the child said this about brown people.
However, my impression from this story is that he is also experimenting with the concept that saying something about people with brown skin is very different than saying something about people who wear blue trousers.
-- I don't know why it's so easy for me to trust my children will grow out of the need to breastfeed, or sleep close to me, or be carried so much, but I panicked at the thought of this 'opinion' being permanent.—
While this panic may not be the better choice, it’s understandable. Race is likely going to be a difficult and decisive issue for a mixed child for a long time, and it’s such a loaded issue in terms of how our society works that I wanted to add to this discussion more attention to how this is different than thinking breastfeeding will be permanent, and a quote about a parent “unschooling” themselves and rethinking race in order to move away from being afraid that their child will reject the parent’s identity. This can come up again and again, and the quote below might be helpful in rethinking the relationship between a child’s learning process and race as a category . Because to me, the original post on this thread isn’t about “unschooling and intolerance.” From what the son said (which, again, you might find is about something completely different than race for this particular four-year-old after talking more), he might “tolerate” brown people, but is experimenting with categorizing types of people by race, i.e. racism. So I also think the following quote is helpful in thinking about race not as “tolerance” or “intolerance” for a defined group of people, but as a potential (and loaded) category for organizing people in the first place. I see the writer in the quote below as moving from fear and a desire to teach his child about race and toward unschooling concepts—listening to the child’s interest and experience and desires—as the essay progresses.
This is from “Beautiful on All Sides” by Tomas Moniz in Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood, pages 59-63. http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781604864816-3
“My youngest daughter wants to be white.
Or that’s my fear. What I really should say is that my youngest daughter has entered the stage of seeing ethnicity for what it is—socially constructed symbols of meaning, ways of inclusion and exclusion; she now actively looks to associate things with ethnicity.
. . .
Ella, my youngest, is light. Ella sees the struggles her mother and I have with our son and his associations with urban male culture; she sees my son’s attempt to connect with certain things and so she is choosing the other path. . . So she likes houses in the hills, hates graffiti and hip-hop, wants to dress properly, wants to follow the rules. She is incredibly perceptive, and she’s aware that it’s about ethnicity and class in those ways kids know and can allude to if not outright question.
“Why can’t everyone live in north Berkeley, if it’s this nice?”
. .
In this U.S. culture race is fixed, static—you’re black or Mexican or Asian. And for white folks, U.S. culture (read: whiteness) refuses to see itself, and instead, white folks tend to buy into the belief in the universal, which of course is whiteness, that’s the privilege of being white in the U.S.—you don’t have to see it.
But for a growing majority of people, ethnicity is fluid; it’s piecemeal, chosen, reclaimed, refused, relearned. There is a damage of appropriation; there is a need to be clear on intent and responsibility; there is a need for dialog, lots of it. I guess as my daughter brings up again and again ethnicity, I should relish the opportunity to talk about it. As we read stories and look at the pictures: Oh, she has hair like mine, I wanna be her. In the media: Why does the donkey from Shrek sound black? In our family: Dad, how come grandma stopped calling you Tomas? In how we each define ourselves.
As parents, that is our struggle: to be honest, even when it is scary. To be truthful, even when it weighs heavy on our shoulders, when it might hurt, when it implicates us, our choices, our past, perhaps our future. We need to be willing to be open, direct, to call out racism when we see it, but be willing to listen to ideas and experiences from our kids as they begin to see, test, choose identities different from our own. I have wanted to protect my kids, wanted to give them a history that embraced all aspects of their identities in positive, powerful ways. I wanted to create an environment where ethnicity was so visible that it lost its meaning, and we became who we wanted to be, not limited by definitions but not a nebulous attempt at universality. We are and aren’t things. Learn, choose, be accountable. But perhaps it is me that needs to relearn and trust, to step back and see how we can be white and brown; we can even bgirls or gboys all at the same time.”
Sandra Dodd
I don't think categorizing is what racism is. I'm certain that experimenting with it, as a young child, is not racism.
Karen
>>>>>I told him that saying things like that is really insulting and hurtful to others<<<<<When I was a young girl, probably about your son's age, I was afraid of old people. I really didn't know a lot of old people, but the ones I did know weren't very kind. As well, the cartoons and tv shows of the time portrayed old people in a crotchety light. At least in the light from which I was viewing.
As I grew, I must have begun to realize that there really wasn't anything particularly frightening about older people because I don't remember it being much of an issue for me after a certain point. I can't tell you what changed my mind - more experience I suppose.
When Ethan was very young he told me that men of colour frightened him. Internally, I was really blown away. I felt like I had failed my son. But I remember what I said very clearly, in part because it seemed to take me so long to form that one word. The word was "Okay."
In the years that followed, stories, videos, and life have offered us many opportunities to talk about issues surrounding race among other things. Ethan has watched me and Doug interact with people of colour, people old and young, people who practice different religions, people of different socioeconomic classes, as well as people who practice a variety of lifestyles from monogamy to polyamory, and sexual orientations from heterosexual to homosexual and bisexual. Now that he is older it is becoming clear that he is understanding the complexities of human diversity more and more. To be honest, so much more than I did in my twenties even.
Still to this day, and likely tomorrow, there are and will be times when *I* fumble awkwardly with prejudices I haven't fully addressed or even been made aware of yet. The best thing I can do for my son is to show him that when I make mistakes about people, I make an effort to understand my ignorance.
This is a wonderful video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbdxeFcQtaU
We are all learning about one another, and figuring out how to make sense of how we feel about each other and where we fit in to the soup we find ourselves in. It's a delicious soup, but for many of us, it is an acquired taste that takes a little more time, experience and understanding to fully, honestly and joyfully appreciate all of the flavours it offers.