Over at Babble, writer Erin K. Blakeley wonders about the role she may have played in her child’s “prejudice.”
When you are focused on the minutiae of raising a toddler — teaching him how to feed himself, or to play in a sandbox without mauling another child — it’s easy to forget they are becoming anything, much less a thinking, sentient being. But my son’s race problem has reminded me that his powers of perception, like those of all kids his age, are razor-sharp. Every day, the lens through which he sees the world is being crafted. So the question is, what does he see?
As parents, many of us tend to focus on what we want our kids to see and disregard what we are actually showing them. As in, “I want my kids to eat a healthy diet, and never mind the fact that they watch me skip breakfast, work out obsessively and complain about my figure.” Or, “I want my kids to be truthful and honest, and never mind the fact that I screen my calls, or encourage them to lie about liking a present they actually loathe.”
Or in my case, “I want my son to see that I have a library of books left over from my days as an African-American Studies major and a pictorial montage of him dressed in a series of Obama onesies and never mind the fact that I have no black friends, that we live in a neighborhood that is overwhelmingly white, and that the non-white people we meet are either delivering food, caring for other people’s children, or working behind a register.” Read more…
Without even touching on the association Blakeley’s toddler has made between Black people and dogs, I think it says something that her toddler finds it remarkable to even see a Black person and point them out. Seems rather strange living in NYC.
I often wonder why many white people only start to care about issues of race when they adopt a child of color, find themselves in a relationship with a person of color, or when their child does something, like using terminology that makes the parent uncomfortable (not doggie, but using black vs. brown vs. African-American, for example). I guess it’s just white privledge to not have to deal with it day in and day out.
Blakeley’s comment about seeing POC only in subordinate positions is an improtant one, I think. It’s important to me for my son to see middle class people from all backgrounds. We are fortunate to have found an immediate community that meets this requirement, but living in segregated Chicago he also sees a more than enough blighted, litter strewn, brownfield dotted black neighborhoods with an over abundance of liquor and check cashing stores and loitering people. This really concerns me, but it is a reality of this community. What do you do when they’re too little to have discussions about these things, but not too young to observe the racial disparity?
It seems like she’s getting a pass in the comments for just THINKING about racism. Wow.
(I mean, over at the original site….)