Tag: racism

1 Way to Talk about Race with Children

All summer long I’ve been taking pit stops between book signings to go to weddings, attend to medical treatments, and visit old friends. We were driving back from the beach. The van was full: four boys, and three parents.

“You’re brown,” my friend’s blonde headed children to said to my son.

“I’m not brown!” He protested. “I’m peach.”

“You’re brown.”

“Mohana, help,” my friend called from the front seat.

“Is it important what people look like?” I asked my child who was born overseas, is a third culture kid of mixed race parents, and whose mother writes regularly about diversity.

“No.”

“What is important?”

“How they treat us.”

I originally developed this sequence of chats with the five year old to address his reactions to many of the morbidly obese people we see in Qatar and America. A child’s fascination with difference is normal and also a great opportunity to lay foundations for life long learning.

This 40 second backseat chat about race may not seem like a big deal but for two children from North Carolina and two children living overseas, this is the beginning of a lifetime of compassion.

What are the topics you talk about with your nieces, nephews, sons, or daughters?

How to Talk about Race

You’ve probably been in the room when someone starts off with “I don’t want to sound racist BUT —”

The speaker goes on to expand on a stereotype that is likely to make the other listeners uncomfortable.

Or, you’re at the dinner table a friend’s house and without any warning, someone drops the N bomb in casual conversation.

“They like him, for a nigger,” a man said, standing in my friend’s mother’s kitchen.

Lucky for him, and me, and them, my hosts, his Southern accent muffled what I heard, and we moved on.

I grew up in the UnitENGL 103 Privilege Bingoed States as an the child of Indian immigrants. Race was everywhere around me, in how people reacted to what I brought to school to eat to what they said to me about dating.

“Oh, I don’t think of you as black,” was an often repeated phrase, intended as a compliment.

But I’m not white either I would think. So what am I? Who am I in relation to you?

I didn’t have ways to talk about race when I was teenager. The prevalent idea then was that we didn’t have to: the Civil Rights movement had solved all our problems.

Post 9/11 anti-Islamism and recent cases of police brutality show us that race and ethnicity are still very much divisive forces.

We have to talk about them and in ways that are useful, that go beyond excusing ourselves for holding on to stereotypes.

We can begin simply by questioning our assumptions.

A friend, who teaches anthropology gives an exercise which goes like this: everyone in the room anonymously writes down racial stereotypes and passes them in. She reads them out. “Pakistanis smell,” read one card. She keeps going until anyone is so uncomfortable that they call out “Stop.”

Another friend, teaching a class on migrant labor, had all the students play Privilege Bingo. I heard someone present about this at a conference. You restructure the game of Bingo to make all the categories related to positions of privilege: access to education, living within city limits, specific religions, etc. When someone calls out Bingo, thinking they’ve won, you explain the categories.

You can give everyone in the room a ball (or a piece of paper to crumple up) and ask them to toss into the same basket.

On and on. Students seem an easy group to begin this type of dialogue. Talking about race is our collective responsibility.

Have you had any uncomfortable or productive talks about race?

 

Wordless Wednesday: The World is a Pigmentocracy

Driving in gridlocked traffic earlier in the week, a BBC Worldservice piece on pigmentocracy in Martinique resonated with me. People prefer lighter skin not only in the Caribbean but in all the former colonies. This form of reverse racism is appalling.

A more traditional form of bigotry reared it’s head with the awarding of Miss America to Nina Davuluri, an American woman of Indian descent, with many feeling that she was not American enough.

As a woman with darker skinned female Indian relatives, I corroborate the pressure to be as fair as possible.

Bleach based face creams can be found on shelves all over Asia and the Middle East. Ironically a dominant Indian brand is called “Fair and Lovely“.

While we looked at photos last night of the gorgeous Nina, a friend of Caribbean background commented “she’s a dark Indian.” And she is darker than the Aishwarya types who have represented India at Miss Universe or Miss World.

 

 

 

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta