(no subject)

[rivka]

At dinner last night, Alex announced, "Some people with white skin are mean to people with brown skin."

Yikes. "That's right," I said.

"And some people help them get away from the people who are mean."

"Did you learn about this at Sunday School today?" She nodded. "Who helps them?"

"People." She thought for a moment, and then said, "People with brown skin had to do aaaalll the housework."

"That's not fair!" I said. She nodded. "And other people helped them get away?" A lightbulb went off in my head. "Did you learn about Harriet Tubman?" She smiled, and nodded again.

This was surely the point for a parental message about values, but as God is my witness I had no idea what to say or how far to take it. I stuck to her terms: "We always want to be the people who help, and not the people who are mean."

I mentally sorted through and discarded various other things I could add, like "it doesn't matter what color someone is" (demonstrably not true) and finally came up with: "It's important to be nice and friendly to everyone, no matter what color they are. Even if they have purple skin."

"Even if they have blue skin," Alex contributed. We ran through a few more colors, and the conversation was over.

---

I would have put this conversation off, if I could. I haven't been in a hurry to teach Alex about prejudice and bigotry and discrimination and inequality. I fully recognize that, among adults, "I don't see color" becomes an excuse for failure to confront racism and privilege, but among preschoolers it seems like a fine starting position. Or do I have blinders on? What is the age at which I'd feel comfortable sitting my daughter down and explaining that people who look like her have done awful things to people who look like some of her classmates and cousins?

A few weeks ago we were looking at pictures of Sasha and Malia Obama. (One of Obama's unique qualifications in the Presidential race, to Alex, was that "he has little girls like me.") After we'd sorted through a dozen or so pictures, she said, sounding as if it had just occurred to her, "They both have brown skin."

"Yeah," I said. "That's because Mr. Obama and Mrs. Obama both have brown skin, and children are usually the same color as their parents." I wondered if she had never noticed before that Obama is black. (We had been over the heritability-of-skin-color thing before, when she asked why some kids have brown skin.) It certainly didn't seem to be something she thought was noteworthy about him. And why would she? In her three and a half years of life experience, where would she have encountered the necessary background information?

Alex is starting off from a place of innocence. When she tells us (as she's been doing lately; the preschool years are a time of categorization) "Most families in our land have a dad in them, but there isn't a dad at Nick and Allie's house," or "Some kids have two moms, and some kids have two dads," she is completely unaware that those are weighted, fraught categories. She's just describing. Michael and I cheerfully reinforce the normality of all of those family structures. We want her to know, from the very beginning of knowing, that there are many equally valuable ways of being a family. And yet, the passage of Prop 8 makes it so abundantly clear that it's not as simple as Alex's happy categorizing.

As I try to feel my way through parenting, my feeling has been that the right thing to do is to establish bedrock principles of equality and acceptance from the start, so that when Alex encounters concepts like prejudice and discrimination they will feel wrong to her on a gut level.

And you know, it would be so tempting to stop there. It is hard, hard, hard to violate her innocence by teaching her about the rest of it: the history and present course of discrimination in our country and in the world, the ways in which we benefit from prejudice even though we reject it, the moral responsibility we have to change the world to be more like we wish it were already.

I guess I should be grateful that Sunday School gave us a push forward yesterday. Part of me feels like it's too early, like three-and-a-half is too young to know about slavery and racism. But when would I think she was ready? When would it be time?

...I guess that's why we take her to church for moral guidance, huh?

Comments

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

As far as I understand it, from Goffman's book Stigma, you're doing the right thing. He mainly talks about people who are stigmatized, rather than the stigmatizers, but those who were raised by parents who did not stigmatize their whatever-it-is, while the had some rude awakenings, overall did better in self-esteem and coping. Racism crap (& sexism crap) runs deep even in those of us who want to & did minimize it, and I think it's better later.

And I'm not sure the Sunday School lesson goes against this: it's very different from identifying Alex with the oppressors. That can and will come later. It's a hard thing to deal with, even for adults!

For now, I like the thought of her having the general lesson that some people are mean to others, for a lot of bad reasons, and one should be the helper, not the meanie. For instance, she'll encounter school bullies fairly soon, and she must know not to join in, even to help out the bullied if she can. Social construction of race, race guilt--those all can wait. In my not-so humble opinion.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

When my girls were growing up I let their experiences set the pace for these conversations. It seems that's what's happening with Alex too, and that strikes me as a good thing.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i am currently all full of opinions on this subject, being as i just wrote pages upon pages about it.

i think that being as she's white and it's 2008, it's easy to think that it's too early to know about this. a hundred and fifty years ago, she'd have known about slavery at this age no matter what color she was.

i also think that "i don't see color" is a bedrock founding principle of fauxgressive white privilege, and while there are times to start kids out with the easy-but-wrong answer (the sky is blue, rather than explaining refraction, for example), this isn't one of them. "it's important to be friendly to everyone, no matter what color skin they have" is an easy-but-right answer, and i'm glad you thought of it. (and i'm going to steal it, just so you know.)

this is hard stuff. i think you're doing a good job with it.

[erisian-fields.livejournal.com]

I did not grow up hearing positive messages about people who were different than me. I grew up hearing all the most offensive, biggoted idiocy come out of my dad's mouth. However, his behavior didn't match what he said. He treats people as individuals who are good or not based on his observations of their behavior, not what group they may fit into. So, even though I was hearing all the wrong messages, none of them stuck. Biggotry never made sense when I was a kid. It still doesn't.

What I learned from this is that the words matter a lot less than the actions. I noticed the same thing with my own children. What I said didn't matter if my actions didn't match it.

[minnaleigh.livejournal.com]

Part of me feels like it's too early, like three-and-a-half is too young to know about slavery and racism.

I had the same reaction with my niece when she started asking questions at 4. I felt like there was no way she should have to struggle with those concepts so young! Then I realized that it was only through our white privledge that we even had the *option* of it not being a factor in her life which caused a whole other level of guilt.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I think you handled the situation well - yes, some people *are* mean to others because they have a different skin colour or gender, but you're not that kind of person. There will equally be a time when she'll learn about the Holocaust, which might have a lesson of its own: sometimes the oppressive people want you on their side, sometimes they don't, and it's not about anything you've done or anything you are.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

three-and-a-half is too young to know about slavery and racism.

For some children, it might be. Alex seems to be doing fairly well.

[cantkeepsilent.livejournal.com]

I think you did very well. Also, when you feel the call to be the one to help, you can know that people 150 years from now will be proud of you just like you're proud of the folks who helped the slaves escape to Canada.

The only thing ... well.... Even though it is a message I've heard all my life as a white person who grew up in the seventies, I'm not sure that "even if they're purple" feels right to me. It's taking the problem of bias which is extremely immediate for a majority of people in our society and turns it into a fantasy of how you would react to people who don't actually exist. If it were me (having just thought about it), I think I would finish "Even if they were..." with other non-discrimination clauses like national origin or disability ot religion.

[pbrim.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing someone of color talking about when he was a too young to read, in the '40s, his grandfather teaching him to recognize the letter C so he would know which fountains were safe to drink from and which bathrooms were safe to use in public. Very chilling.

[erbie.livejournal.com]

As she gets older, those questions will come. My older was innocent in that same way at 3. At 7, she asks more questions and we talk about it a lot more. Laying the foundation the way you are makes it easier to talk about when they're older and have more understanding and life experience. They also seem a lot less innocent at 6 and 7. The important message at this age, and the one she can understand is what you're teaching her about not being the mean ones. At that age, they may notice that some people have different skin color, but it doesn't mean anything more to them than having different eye colors or living in a different house.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

But when would I think she was ready? When would it be time?

Strangely, I can't recall when I first encountered the concept of slavery. It was before I was 6-7, though, because I read The House of Dies Drear then, and I already knew about slavery and the underground railroad. Most likely, I'd read something else about it before that -- I was an early and avid reader.

The first them vs. us race division I remember in my life was when I was about 5. My mother asked if I wanted my hair in one braid or two, and I asked for "lots of little braids, like some of the black girls have" -- I wanted to wear all my barrettes at once. My mother told me that that was only for black people, which I found disappointing. There wasn't an explicit value judgment associated with it, and her motivation may well have been more to avoid having to make that many braids, but it's not my most comfortable memory now. (Also, this would've been small-town coastal Mississippi, around 1980 or '81, which may have been a factor.)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Then I realized that it was only through our white privledge that we even had the *option* of it not being a factor in her life which caused a whole other level of guilt.

Yes, exactly.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Strangely, I can't recall when I first encountered the concept of slavery. It was before I was 6-7, though, because I read The House of Dies Drear then, and I already knew about slavery and the underground railroad. Most likely, I'd read something else about it before that -- I was an early and avid reader.

I was trying to think of the same thing. I had a simplified children's version of Uncle Tom's Cabin which I probably read when I was five or six, so it might have been from there. But I think I knew before then.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

I really, really wanted cornrows with dangly beads on the ends of all of them. My mother pointed out that it's an awful lot of work, and only lasts a day or two if you have hair like I do, so I reluctantly decided to leave it for 'Special.' Like, I thought rationally, Prom Night or my wedding, sometime when you do something impractical, time-consuming, and expensive with your hair because it's pretty.

My grade school was overwhelmingly non-white.

[(Anonymous)]

I think you've done exactly right in this situation. She knows enough to respond in the way you'd want if she does observe some "meanness." I totally agree that a three-and-a-half year old deserves to retain their innocence whenever possible if for no other reason that we are all better off with a chance to observe such innocence.

I was thinking that it might be an interesting exercise to ponder how you would wish to have responded had the lesson been on sexism, i.e. where your daughter belongs more to the oppressee than oppressor class.

Sincerely,
Grandma Susan

[tendyl.livejournal.com]

Can I be a mom like you when I grow up?