kids and racism

That isn't some sort of a-ha! clever image post. Just... throwing it out there?

Characters in The Simpsons are yellow because creator Matt Groening wanted to get the attention of people who were channel hopping.

Pretty much every other animated sitcom and cartoon uses shades of pink / beige / 'fleshtones' tho, including

http://i.imgur.com/UWYLYjY.jpg

I give 'em credit for going one way when you think they would've gone another.

http://gamesfemme.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/real-simpsons.png

Also thanks pp for pointing out that the Simpsons is racist against pirates

Here's my daughter's exposure to animated Asian characters:

http://www.toysrus.com/cms_widgets/18/86/188647_assets/kailan-092409.gif

She did tell me one time that when her best friend smiles real big, her eyes crinkle up "like a Chinese girl's."

Our eyes do crinkle up like white people's though when we laugh, it's true

Looks Euro to me!

http://th05.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/f/2011/103/8/4/yao_ming_meme_new_version_hd_by_guillersevilla-d3dwein.png

so this turned out to be what I thought. they were drawing/coloring and Veronica said she was going to draw an Asian person so she was going to use yellow. We talked about how Asian people's skin is not really yellow (just like we aren't really white, we're more of a pinkish/orange-ish and black people aren't really black etc.) and how/why that's talking about their skin color that way is hurtful to them, the history of it etc. I tried to make it really clear that she was not in trouble, she hadn't done anything knowingly wrong, this was just stuff she was previously unaware of and that she should be aware of so that she doesn't hurt people's feelings.

fwiw she said it was a pastel I don't actually know what shade it was, maybe it was more of an orange bronze or something and she just called it yellow? she knows asian people aren't yellow. I dunno. misunderstandings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC1nRepRSxo

man those kids look nervous

results about what I would expect tbh

so my daughter expressed an interest in my Little Nemo in Slumberland books, I've read her a bunch at this point. Felt compelled to spell out that the Imp character is a racist caricature and why/how common it was in print back then. She didn't seem to care (get back to the laffs, old man) but I couldn't let it go by unremarked in good conscience.

I think that when we were little kids, we were exposed to a lot more in-your-face racism. I wouldn't have been caught dead saying racist stuff - I even learned the word "racism" at a very young age. Racists were very bad people who did cruel things to people who weren't white.

I get surprised with what kids come up with today, but I suppose that's the reason. How many opportunities do you have to address the issue to children?? What is the "right time"?

You could hire some of your beer buddies to hold a cross-burning on your front yard- after that, your children will never even think a racist thought! (They might never want to leave the house, though!)

so guess who went to a school meeting about race and racism last night

prompted by a specific incident which we were instructed not to address directly (privacy concerns etc.)

What was the incident??

You need to address the specific incident here directly please

my son goes to a very diverse middle school, wrt to ethnicity and socio-economic status, and has learned a lot of racial jokes told by people in those racial communities, about themselves. so we have to keep going over that these jokes aren't cool for us to use about them, even though they're hilarious; and that this goes the other way, so that we can tell jokes about our ethnic communities that aren't ok for others to use about us. He gets it, but it requires developing a pretty high sense of abstraction, and I can see how unstable these situations could be when that degree of abstraction isn't attainable.

This summer my son watched Blazing Saddles for the first time over at his grandma's. We were all taking a hike while out on a camping trip. We had just cut short a discussion of Trump and Sanders and Trump and the election, because it's pretty heavy subject matter and it had been eating up our souls for the last year and we were hoping to just get away from it and enjoy nature for a weekend. So we're walking in peace for about two minutes when he decides it's funny to reenact Mel Brooks' "Can't you see that man is a ni-?" scene. My wife BLEW UP at him. I think she was over-the-line, but she was kinda bent out of shape from the Trump discussion and trying to hike with two kids in the heat.

I would have liked to have had a deeper conversation about humor and racism with the kid, but I had to put all my energy into defusing the fiasco. Like, if you've seen the movie which we all have, you know that it's totally a pointed satire of racism. You know that Brooks' character is a racist dunderhead. But I probably would have liked to have talked with him about tone and context and timing and when it might be appropriate to re-tell such jokes from the movie.

The kids go to an elementary school where they're usually one of only a couple or so white kids in the classroom. In the boy's room, he and his buddies all call each other "Bro."

Ok. I've heard it more from frat boys "bro'ing down" in the past decade than from its original roots, but ok. If everyone's cool with it, then why not. Certainly worst words he could learn.

At least that's what I thought until we went to soccer practice last week where the racial ratios are completely flipped. During a two-on-two drill, he set the ball up and passed it to his teammate, one of only two black kids on the squad. Kid kicked it in for the goal, and my boy turns around to his pal and says, 'YEAH! That's what I'm talkin' about, BRO!"

I think I may have been the only one to wince, but then again, I sit apart from all the other parents during practice.

i don't think there's any awkward racial thing going on there, though.

this thread makes me wonder: what were the things our parents were this anxious about while raising us & how did it affect us?

eh "bro" is pretty harmless and not ethnic-specific in my opinion.

to get back to my thread revive (lol don't wanna leave ya hangin Euler!) - an incident occurred that my wife and I were made aware of via an e-mail thread that popped up on the PTA list. So our knowledge of the incident was all second-hand and since it did not involve my daughter's class or grade or anyone we personally knew I was inclined not to get directly involved, but when I heard there was going to be a school-wide community meeting thing to discuss racism and how to handle it I thought sure, I'll go.

My daughter's school is heavily latino. There is a smattering of white kids, a smattering of black kids, and a larger smattering of kids from mixed-backgrounds. Apparently in one of the first grade classes two latino boys threatened to shoot a black girl and called her the n-word. This happened in class, the teacher witnessed it, it was reported to school authorities, who attempted to handle it but appear to have failed - or at least have not yet resolved it to the satisfaction of the African American family. People on the PTA email list were up in arms that the administration was not, in their view, appropriately punitive or proactive in making the African American family feel safe and welcome. I am not sure specifically what was done/what should have been done, because (of course) those interactions/meetings/mediation/whatever between the aggressor, the victim, and the administration are private.

The larger community meeting was interesting to me, in that it was your basic "feelings circle" sort of meeting where everyone expresses their wishes about having a multicultural community that does not accept intolerance etc. And that was great. Honestly when I hear people like working class immigrant latino dads expressing, in Spanish, the same feelings and thoughts I have - there is something really powerful in that. And it was cool to see all these different people describing their personal experiences and finding common ground.

What it didn't do (of course) was address the specifics of the incident that prompted it. What should happen to those two latino boys? Where did they even pick up the language + idea that they could/should do such a thing? How do you combat that? It made me think that my daughter doesn't even know what the n-word is - and while she would have recognized that what was happening was wrong if she had witnessed it, she wouldn't have necessarily grasped the racial component (just like I don't think she fully grasped the racial component/theme of Zootopia, which we watched at the school's movie night a couple days after the incident in question).

So that made me think that maybe it was time to address racially loaded language, what ethnic slurs are, where they come from, how they are deployed and why. But, of course, you can't discuss something like this without *using the actual words*. I started in on the topic last night at dinner - just asking my daughter if she had heard kids making fun of other kids based on ethnicity, what words they had used if so, if she understood what a racial slur was. But before I got down to specifics my wife cut me off, insisting we talk about this ourselves before we went too far. My thinking was that I would start off by going into slurs that she might get directed at herself, so that she understands it on a personal level first. Because at some point someone - either at school, or on the internet, or on the street, or whatever - is going to call her a dirty Jew or a kike or something. And when that happens I want her to understand what is happening and be prepared for it. And then from there we could expand the discussion into other ethnicities and language etc. (I'm not planning on covering all of this in one conversation, mind you). As far as the n-word specifically goes, my wife and I were casting about for how to even cover it without fucking it up somehow - I half-jokingly suggested Richard Pryor records or speeches by segregationists, but I think we settled on this book by Desmond Tutu called "Desmond and the Very Mean Word".

Anyway. Shit is tricky!

xxp

what were the things our parents were this anxious about while raising us & how did it affect us?

nuclear armageddon

Apparently in one of the first grade classes two latino boys threatened to shoot a black girl and called her the n-word.

that is insane

i mean i can easily guess where a couple of first graders might pick that up, unfortunately

community is justifiably in an uproar about it, but idk how productive it is to have parents not directly involved attempting to stick their noses in (which is what is happening - "let's write a letter to the District demanding A, B, and C!" and I'm like "you don't even know what the fuck you're talking about." Basically my opinion is that unless one of the families involved has specifically appealed to you for help, butt out, you're meddling from a position of ignorance).

I would like to chime in on pplain's much less serious story and say that you are delusional if you don't think there's a racial component to the way "bro" and "brother" gets used in American society

The number of times I have been referred to as "bro" or "brother" by a clumsy white dude attempting to signal that he's Down With The Brown in contexts that make absolutely no sense (examples: holding open the door; receiving change after making a purchase; asking for directions; soliciting for a charity; walking down the street), particularly when the dudein question has referred to everyone around me as "sir", "ma'am", "mister", "miss" or "ms", would fill decently-sized paperback novel.

I dont think "brother" and "bro" are interchangeable - the latter gets deployed (including by me) in all kinds of non-racial contexts. Maybe thats a west coast/surfer/hippie/tech thing idk.

I live in a town where both are part of the general lexicon and it's still blatantly obvious when someone is using it because they use it all the time with everyone and when someone is using it because they saw a black person and panicked.

I'm not saying pp's kid falls into the latter camp given the history as laid out; I'm saying I 100% understand why he would wince when he said it in a different context in front of a different audience.

Sure, fair enough

I've been kind of wondering how to handle this as my daughter goes from a nearly all Jewish preschool to a public school that will be like 40% white, 40% asian, and the rest hispanic or black. She has non-white friends at the playground and in our building sometimes does promising things like directly identify with a non-white character in a book or show. She does tend to make comments like "there are a lot of Chinese people here!" when we, say, go to Flushing -- I feel like she is still a little young for me to say "that's not nice to say out loud" because I don't want her to think there is something wrong with there being a lot of Chinese people or shameful about noticing that. I don't think raising her to be "color blind" is realistic. I try to point out that "your mom speaks a different language, just like her mom," or "your mom was born in another country, and you are an American, just like him." Four year old minds can tend to get confused about these things, so my biggest goal is to just have her feel comfortable with there being many different kinds of people around and with it being ok to notice but not ok to make fun of or discriminate.

sounds like the way to go :)

Maybe thats a west coast/surfer/hippie/tech thing idk.

Bro, dude. Not "brah". ;-)

In case any of you didn't already have a snappy answer to your country cousin's question of "How come they can say it and we can't?", feel free to use my son's experience as one practical, everyday easy-to-understand example, which I admit, doesn't even begin to scratch the surface.

ugh what a drag this is. daughter is only 3, blissfully unaware of any such stupid thing as race but she is mixed herself so there will be conversations I'm not particularly looking forward to.

"kids and racism" is all that needs to be said really, of course the only way we will end this nonsense is via the kids, but instead of treating it as a silly fun thing like star sign or blood type I'll have to weigh her down with endless explanations and history and old, old baggage and it makes me ill but oh well? can only do so much to prepare the road for her but I can certainly prepare her for the road, and so on and so on

The thing is, if EVERYONE had these conversations as opposed to just minorities, the conversations would get easier

I don't think raising her to be "color blind" is realistic.

Yeah I would just want to add - nor desirable