Dear Anti-Racist Parent,
I am Spanish, living in the UK with my white British husband and our two children, a birth son aged 7 and a daughter adopted from China who is now 4.
My question has to do with pre-school. It’s now the school holidays, and the other day, playing in bed with my daughter, she got angry with me and ‘stretched her eyes’ sideways with her fingers, and made a mean face. I asked her, “what is that face?” She said, “This is what Pete does to me in school when he is angry with me.” I explain why this is not right, and we had a talk about it.
My question really is about the nursery school (which is ethnically very mixed). I am going to discuss this with her teacher when the school holidays are over, but I was wondering if there any materials that I can bring with me – leaflets, booklets or similar. So far I have found useful stuff for primary school children and older, but nothing much for the littlest ones (3-5). My aim is to impress upon the teacher that this is not acceptable, and that she has to address it (I am suspect she will say ‘”They are so little; they don’t know what they are doing. It doesn’t mean anything.”) but I’d also like to offer her useful material for her to use. It may be that this will be unnecessary, but my hunch is that it won’t.
Any help would be more than welcome.
Best wishes,
Paloma
From the Editor:
I am so sorry. I always feel like I should begin my responses to “Ask ARP” by apologizing. It’s silly. I know I have no personal responsiblity for what happened to your daughter. But I am so very sorry that this stuff still happens to our children.
You are right that the teacher might use your daughter’s friend’s young age to avoid addressing the situation. But the age of the children involved is all the more reason to use this as a teaching moment. You might stress to the teacher that you realize the boy is young and is eithering parroting something seen elsewhere or calling out a perceived difference in a way that is unacceptable. He likely does not realize the impact of his actions. By gently teaching him and his other classmates now (in a way that is age-appropriate), she can help ensure that these race-biased behaviors that are unwitting now don’t become ingrained and continued in adulthood. We cannot ensure a more equal future if we do not talk to our children about racial equality today.
And here is something else to share–the important part really–no matter the age of the person who voices the racial prejudice, the comments can stick with the victim. I remember very well when Chrissy W. told me I wasn’t invited to her birthday party because I was black and she and her friends were white. I am 38. That incident happened when I was six. Your daughter deserves to be safe from racial prejudice in the classroom.
I hope that we are both wrong, Paloma, and that your daughter’s instructor “gets it” without much prompting on your part.
Our readers always have great recommendations for resources, so I hope lots of people will chime in on this one. But I’d like to direct you to the Web site Teaching Tolerance for a host of anti-racist resources for children, parents and teachers. You may find that many of the kits and handouts are U.S.-focused, but I think the basic ideas can be adapted to any community. Pay particular attention to The Preschool Years page.
Best of luck.
Tami
We had an incident at my (asian/white) 6 year old daughter’s school where a picture of a kid making the “slanted eyes” face actually made it *into the yearbook*.
First thing I did was talk to the PTA President (who is also the mother of 2 biracial asian/white children), and then we both approached the school principal. Within 15 minutes of receiving my email (complete with a scanned copy of the picture) I got a very apologetic phone call from the principal assuring me that she would bring it up with all the teachers and have them nip it in the bud if they saw it happening. The new school year starts soon, so fingers crossed that it doesn’t happen again.
As an early childhood educator, I really respect the work of Louise Derman-Sparks when it comes to helping children, families and educators learn how to resist bias in the preschool years.
Here is a link to a PDF document that she helped develop for the purposes you seem to be looking for, it’s called ‘Teaching Young Children to Resist Bias: What Parents Can Do.”
http://www.teachingforchange.org/DC_Projects/ECEI/teachingyoungchildren.pdf
It’s not too long, and has both theoretical and practical info. I hope it helps!
-Atena
i too am sorry your daughter had this experience. and i second the teaching tolerance resource… in fact, they have a free video and teaching booklet for educators called “starting small”. it is excellent. it has several different teaching scenarios about unpacking race and diversity on the video, and the book has even more. the principal would have to order it, as it is limited to one per school and is to be used for the teachers, not with the kids.
i’d also suggest some preschool books to the teacher, such as the colors of us, amazing grace (the picture books), i love you like crazy cakes, and others that would help support her work in the classroom. if she wants to do reading herself, the first R, how children learn race and racism, by van ausdale has lots in there about preschoolers and racial identity, as well as racism. maybe you could find a particularly good chapter and copy it for her, offering the full book if she’d like to read it?
good luck.. i hope the school is receptive and doesn’t brush it off.
I second the recommendation of the “The First R” about how kids learn about race and racism in preschool. It really helps you understand how important the adult reaction to incidents like this is. Seeing adults freak out, or talk sanely about how ignorant that kind of behavior is, will tell the children pretty much what they will carry with them. Let a little child know that he/she has a tool to send a roomful of adults over the edge and you can guess that the kid will think of race as a magic weapon — and learn to hide racism deep.
well apparently, things are not very different in the world of adults. see the link below for a story about spanish basketball olympians doing the same thing. uggh. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/47119-spains-basketball-team-a-lesson-in-being-politically-correct
I am worried about my daughter as well…………I am white and my children are mixed of arab decent and my daughter will be going to second grade, my family is also muslim. I have learned that she will be in a classroom that has a jewish woman as a teacher….i have also heard many comments from other parents that she does not care about the children that she teaches(because they are muslim) My daughter had all A’s last year for all of first grade……….I am very worried about this teacher(from the remarkes i have heard abouit her) and I hope she does not let my daughter fall under the boat( just because she is muslim) I hope that this is all just a misunderstanding and I hope that she is a very nice sweet and God loving person. God bless………:)