Growing up in the 70′s and 80′s, I was aware of racism, but it seemed to me to be a much more hidden, insidious thing than what I heard about from the past. Apparently, it’s much more in the forefront than I had realized, and runs deeper too. When I read articles like these, I am in shock:
Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Neo-Nazi Republican Delegates in Michigan
I had actually thought that our British friends were a little more advanced on this subject, but then I read Man shot three times by racist gunman – for wearing Barack Obama T-shirt
I know, I’m naive. I truly don’t know what the best approach is. My 6 year old son doesn’t know the term “black” or “white” when describing people. When he asked me why his friends had such dark skin, I showed him my sickly-pale white arm and compared it to his mother’s olive-skinned Greek beauty. I compared those to his own tanned skin and explained that everyone was different and that different melanin levels caused different skin color. That’s how I always thought about it.
He’s going to have to understand the dynamics of race as he gets older, but for now I just don’t want him to have to deal with such hatred. I want to delay the end of innocence. The lament of all parents, I imagine.
#1 by Perky Skeptic on October 7, 2008 - 6:26 pm
:sigh: I so know how you feel. It is utterly bizarre and the ultimate depth of irrationality to be against someone just because of what they look like. I cannot fathom how this attitude survives.
My little boy rarely refers to skin color, vastly preferring to catalogue people by shirt color. “That blue guy over there,” for instance, is a common phrase from him. But when he does describe skin, he says he is beige and his friends are brown. If you were to tell him someone was “black” or “white,” he would think you were talking about their clothes, in all likelihood, because people’s skin doesn’t really come in those colors!
#2 by CyberLizard on October 8, 2008 - 8:22 am
My boy did the same thing! When asked about people he met, he invariably referred to them by the color of their clothes.
“I asked that blue kid to be my friend” we’d hear from him at the park. Too cute.
#3 by Perky Skeptic on October 8, 2008 - 8:56 am
One time he was talking about people getting married, and I asked him what kind of girl he thought he was going to marry. He said, “A silver girl.”
(Of course, then I had to make sure he knows he is welcome to marry a man if he so wishes. He replied, “Well– I just think I’ll marry a woman.” *lol*)