Perspective on Color and Race from a Child's Eye Essay

I think that little kids don’t know what racism is, but their parents are the ones that raise them the way they are, being racist. How can we tell when kids are being racist? Well because you see kids at school and they have their own little groups with their own race. Whites with whites, blacks with blacks, Latinos with Latinos, etc. A lot of little kids don’t like playing with kids of a different race, we see that in places like daycare or preschool.

One of the most stimulating aspects of early education is observing and supporting young children as they develop their individual identities. This development takes place within different social contexts where issues relating to human diversity and difference impact significantly on children’s understandings and ways of being in the world. Arguably, our education begins when we are first able to detect causes and consequences, and continue to form the basis of our identity, behaviours and knowledge of the world around us. Glover (1991) in the early 1990s found that as 2-3 year old children became aware of difference they simultaneously develop positive and negative feelings about the differences they observe. For example, racial awareness impacts on their perceptions of skin colour and on their preferences in the social relationships they initiate and foster with other children. An Australian study conducted by Palmer (1990) exemplifies how preschool children were able to make negative judgements based on racial characteristics of young Aboriginal children. Children were reportedly saying ‘You’re the colour of poo… Did your mum drop you in the poo?’ This observation suggests that children as young as 2 years old are becoming aware of diversity and differences of others, and these judgements children are making are often affecting their ability to make sound judgements of others

This happens at home, and by adults that have asses to your kid. Kids do what they are told and copy what they hear. So if a parent does not like a race it will trickle down to the kids. Kids are like sponges and they soak up all the information that they learn and apply in in everyday life.

A child's curiosity can cost them to lose their innocence when they are confronted with racist life issues.

Some People tend to laugh and feed on putting someone down based on their race and some may not even know they are being racist at all. The fact is that your behavior towards someone can be racist even when you may be “Joking” or “Messing around.” The matter of fact is the racial comments were still made and still have a hurtful message. In the essays we read we were given a real life example of how even unintentional racial comments can still be harmful to someone and shouldn’t be used as a cultural norm. One imperative stride to lessening the racist culture in America is to incorporate educational programs for our youth to show them that we are all created equal and racism has no place in our society. These measures can help raise equality and counter the impacts of any prejudice or dogmatism that happens in the children’s homes by helping them see and comprehend what generalizations and racism are and that they ought to be stayed away from. The adults and leaders in the lives of the youngsters are the illustrations that the kids look up to and will determine how they will act when they are older. By instructing the kids at a young age about the threats of generalization and racism, we can limit the transference of bigotry to the future

One of the most common forms of racism is implicit or subconcious racism. Implicit bias refers to beliefs and stereotypes that are subconscious and have an effect on our actions and the real world.The study of J. King examined students' responses to his single question regarding the reasons for the differences in Black and White children's life chances in the first year of their lives. The study has been done in 1988 and separated students' answers in three main categories : they view the issue either as a result of slavery (Category I), denial of equal opportunity for African Americans(Category II) or as part of a framework of society in which racism is a norm (Category III) ( J.King, 1991) . All responses were divided

Parents can help these children by acknowledging the existence of prejudice, racism, and discrimination. Parents must be able to explain why the child's minority group is mistreated. Understanding the behaviors beyond simply being "good or bad" will enhance the child's coping skills. Understanding the functions and reasons for the behaviors increases the child's range of responses beyond anger or retaliation (Crumbley). Parents must work to minimize their children's feelings of helplessness. A child's identity can be more positive if he or she perceives him or herself and members of racial groups to be empowered with choices, resources, and the ability to protect their rights.

Furthermore, there’s the implication that children are born with racial prejudices. Aibileen says “I want to yell so loud that baby girl can hear me that dirty ain’t a color, disease ain’t the Negro side of town. I want to stop that moment from coming – and it come in every white child’s life – when they start to think that colored folks are not as good as white” (Stockett 96). Prejudices are not born in a person, they are taught by the older generations.

The agenda of racism is complicated to discuss as it is a vast topic. The development of race has no true biological definition, however, it is important in the social construction because it supports racism, discrimination, and ideologies (American Psychiatric Association, 2014). The concept of racism was historically used to differentiate some people and show that one’s race is particularly more superior and has the right to dominate other races (Anti-racism Education for

First, it may suggest that children are predisposed to consider gender information when evaluating people and not for their race. This can be thought of in evolutionarily purposes and how we have always known about gender differences, whereas race differences came about in recently modern times when people from different cultures came into contact with one another. A second possibility is that children may attend to gender categories before racial categories because adults tend to label and emphasize the distinctions in genders more than race. A third possibility is that young children do not reliably attend to race information, whereas they are more sensitive to information for gender. One important theme in this article is that a child will respond the same whether they are asked to consider an attribute or social category in first person or in third person. Another important idea is that the age differs when children make decisions about social relationships based on gender and not race. For example, found that three-year-old children used gender but not race similarities between themselves and other when deciding with whom they wanted to be friends. Four-year-old children attended to gender and racial category membership to guide inferences about others relationships but did not use these categories to reason about others shared activity preferences. All of these findings provide evidence for three suggestions about

The purpose of this study conducted by Walter Gilliam et al. at a Yale University child study center, was to measure the implicit bias held by preschoolers against young black children, particularly the males. When teachers were presented with a video of four children–a black male and female as well as a white male and female–they were instructed to indicate when they believed that there was a behavior that had the potential to become “challenging.” Even though there was actually no challenging behavior in each of the examples, the results showed that the teachers focused more on the black children and indicated at the end of the study, that the child that required the most attention was the black boy. This study shows the stereotypes that

“Racism is still with us but it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet and hopefully we shall overcome.” Said Rosa parks QTD from brainy quotes. The world is filled with racism and hate and it will continue to be this way if we let the children see the world this way. Children are the most impressionable and if we teach them to not be racist as they grow up racism will eventually end once and for all. In my eyes, racism is one of the largest known ethnic problems that is being taught to the children who grow up thinking these things are ok to imitate. children are not born racist but growing up in the environment of racists they will learn and have the ability to become this way. We need to teach our children what racism is, what difference is, and most importantly the right way to act towards those differences. I Think racism comes mostly from hate and not history. After a while yes you do learn the history part of it as a kid but that 's not where you learn it from, but once you do learn the history behind it, you kind of understand the hate. As a kid, you don 't understand why it would still be happening if is so disliked and looked down upon. As a child, I learned about racism from the hate and not from the books. Racism mostly comes from either your household and how your family teaches you or what you learned from school by the kids and It happens to you and everyone around you.

Race has always been a serious topic in the United States since we gained freedom from Great Britain and became our own country. There has always been racial division and inequality due to differences in the color of one’s skin. Although the tensions aren’t as bad as they were during times of slavery or during times of segregation, races other than white (“the normal race”) still face many biases in society. Minorities still have a harder time making ends meet and live in more poverty than those who are white. Minorities still have higher unemployment rates than those who are white. Minorities still get treated differently because their skin is not white. Minorities are simply not treated or seen the same as those who are white. Why is this a problem we face and is there something we can do to change this from reoccurring in the future? In Chapter 3 of Nurture Shock, Brigitte Vittrup does research on white parents and how they teach their children about race. She feels these biases are still being made because white parents don’t teach race to their children, in turn their children learn to form these biases towards minorities. In order to see things change, we have to do something different. We should begin by teaching children about race from a young age. If we don’t teach them that we’re all the same and that everyone should be judged by their hearts and not their skin they will learn to see the different races and create their own biases. Eventually we will continue to

As someone who works with elementary school students, you learn that you will experience moments that will either make you laugh, become frustrated or provoke thought. I remember one moment where two students were discussing a situation that occurred with a student. The mention of the person’s race involved, followed up with the statement “That's racist!”. Now it's imperative for me to mention, when there's a conflict and confusion is in the mix, it's best to clear it up especially with children. I immediately told the students that the mere mention of a person's race isn't racist, rather pairing it with racial stereotypes or negative connotations is. This short moment, made me theorize that because race is a constant topic in America, words like racism and discrimination are losing their meaning, especially in the youth today.

Parenting is challenging in the best of times, but how do we teach our kids about the violence that saturates the news and social media? How do we teach them about racism, prejudice, and discrimination? Research from Harvard University recommends children as young as three years old, when exposed to racism and discrimination tend to accept and mimic it, even though they might not understand their feelings. By age five, white children are considerably biased towards whiteness. To reverse this bias, experts suggest acknowledging and naming race and racism with children as early and as often as possible (Burnett). Children 's books are one of the most practical and helpful tools for initiating these crucial conversations; they can also be