A majority of the kids from the YMCA were African American, which in our small town is uncommon, so I guess he knew they were different somehow. His question wasn't malicious or angry. He had probably heard himself referred to as "white," so in his head it made sense to call them brown. Of course we told him that wasn't what we called them; they're just kids like you. But, while his innocence was sort of amusing at first, the more I watched him and thought about it, the more it saddened me. Ned is a smart kid, and I could see him processing this new information in his head, where it would surely leave an indelible mark: "Dark-skinned people are different from me. They're rowdy and I shouldn't play with them."
Now I'm not saying that I think he'll turn into a malicious racist or anything like that; his family will raise him better than that. But it does make me wonder if we'll ever live in a color-blind world. It seems like a pretty far reach to hope so. Sure, it's gotten better since the fifties and sixties, but there are still cultural and ethnic differences that are apparent even to a six-year-old. I don't know if it's better or worse in bigger cities where there may or may not be more integration. But in small towns, it seems pretty universal: there is a stigma attached to being different from everyone else. In my high school class there was one African American. And he was adopted by a white mother. People keep their distance when someone different comes to town. They're wary and uncomfortable.
And it makes me sad. "A person's a person, no matter how small," says Dr. Seuss, probably one of the wisest men of my childhood. Of course "small" is interchangeable with any number of words, including "color" or "race" or "religion" or "wealth." In society's eyes, I'm lucky that I was born into a Caucasian, middle-class family. And to me, that's all it is, is luck. I'm no better or worse than anyone else. But despite my efforts to look past race, I'm not always successful. Like Ned, there are certain stereotypes that are so ingrained in me, I don't even realize they exist until something brings it up, and I'm forced to confront that little bit of ugliness in me. To bring up another of America's wisest men, Stephen Colbert frequently claims he can't see race. "They're all just people."
If only that was possible for all of us.
I have to disagree here a little. The one and ONLY thing that I got out of my RA class the other year is that in white society, we are brought up (for the most part) these days to overlook race. In other societies, however, this is actually not the case. My class was about half white and half black, and the majority of the black students said they were raised to feel as if they had a bigger struggle ahead of them, that they still had to fight to get into college and such. Now, I also have to say that I disagree with THIS view.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the answer is looking past race, or viewing one as having to struggle more, or worrying about it at all. We just need to be conscious and teach our children that people ARE different and that's OK!!! We can be aware of cultural differences and still respectful of them.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking for myself, while I cannot lie to myself and say that I cannot see that other people are of a different ethnicity, it is literally meaningless to me. I am more inclined to see culture in terms of nationality. That people of a certain nationality are more likely to be of a certain ethnicity, and moreover that migrants of both different ethnicities and nationalities are likely to maintain their own independent subcultures to help preserve their cultural identities, is purely incidental. If anything, it only increases my curiosity. I guess different people have different reactions to the unknown. My gut reaction is to learn. I'm attracted to the exotic.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe there were any black children in my junior school (ages 8-11; I'm British), but there sure were a couple in my high school. I was literally oblivious to the difference. I couldn't understand racism at all. Though I can perceive it intellectually now, it still baffles me.
My family was working class and so both my mother and my grandmother were somewhat prejudiced against ethnic minorities, though my mother always did her best not to pass this on to me and allow me to make up my own mind. I believe where in America you have Mexicans, in England we have Pakistani people, or 'pakis'.
It seems to be fairly common for people of Indian or Pakistani origin to run their own off-licenses or general stores, and I can remember when I was young people would sometimes refer to going to the 'paki shop'. "Don't call them that", I'd say. "It's called the corner shop". People also frequently made racist jokes at high school. I just didn't laugh. Perhaps my dislike of racism was only notional at first. Now, though, it's holistic.
I think the most important thing for current and future generations is perspective. Too bad then that the definition of the word is so variable and open to interpretation, and that it's kinda difficult to teach something like that.