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19 Sep 09 - 06:20 PM (#2726918) Subject: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: Janie Here is a fascinating, thoughtful and informative article, Even Babies Discriminate: Nurtureshock. It is well worth a careful read, and also worth calling attention to in it's own thread. The article is research based, but not technical. It assumes you have read at least some of the lay literature on developmental psychology, or have some basic understanding of issues around early childhood development. If you are a parent or educator, especially of very young children, it offers some very good advice worth considering. |
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19 Sep 09 - 07:07 PM (#2726940) Subject: RE: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: artbrooks Janie, I especially liked the part (I read it in hard-copy last week) where it described supposedly enlightened parents who refused to discuss race with their children, and figured that they would be "naturally" colorblind. One exchange: mother tells child (apparently repeatedly), "everyone is equal". Child finally responds to mother, "what does 'equal' mean?". |
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19 Sep 09 - 09:00 PM (#2727003) Subject: RE: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: Azizi Janie, thanks for posting a link to that article. One of the points that the article makes was that far fewer White parents than Black parents talk about race with their young children. To expand on this point, many of the posters on racialicious.com are first generation racially mixed (Black/White; Korean/Black; Chinese/White etc.) A recent recent essay on that blog was about a segment of the television show "Jon & Kate Plus Eight in which Jon (who is Korean/White) and Kate (who is White) have twin girls and sextaplets). Repeatedly, many mixed race posters to that essay indicated that when they were children, their parents had not talked to them about race. http://www.racialicious.com/2009/09/18/jon-and-kate-plus-race/#comments "Jon & Kate Plus Race" By Special Correspondent Nadra Kareem Here are excerpts of some of the readers' comments about whether their parents talked about race - "...Growing up in a biracial household,I noticed that some parents stay off the issue of the kids being biracial until kids are older, some parents do it when they are young as 3 or 5, it depends on the parentI myself didn't hear people telling I wasn't XYZ till I was in my teens"... -GüeraLola ** ..."coming from a mixed race family that never talked about race (mind you my parents never filled my head with racial stereotypes, they just never talked about race), sometimes kids find a way to muddle through on their own". -Thea Lim ** "...as the parent of bi-racial children growing up in NYC- we never really discussed the intricacies of their racial/cutural make-up…they never asked and quite frankly-I don't think they thought of themselves as being different given the multi-racial/cultural makeup of both my husband's and my own family and living in NYC. Since moving to AZ, they've been asked and regretfully we've had to hold a crash course in multi-racial/cultural social morays. It kind of felt like Black history month or Latin food night at our house…although it certainly wasn't as simple or as trivial as that. -t. allen-mercado ** In contrast to those commentors, one poster wrote that "My mom did a good job educating me about my ethnic heritage. She drew a pie chart on a paper plate for me and explained where my grandparents came from and showed those places to me on a globe"... -Jennifer dG ** Also, if I correctly understood that Newsweek article, the authors indicated that children feel their group (race) was superior to all other races. I don't think that's true for most children of color. For example, a number of the Asian posters on Racialicious have commented on several essays I've read-including this one-that when they were children, they wished that they were White. See this comment from a reader of that "Jon & Kate Plus Race" essay: "Is it bad that i liked that the kids [on that television show] all wanted to be asian? I guess when i was growing up all the asian kids ever wanted to be was white and were often ashamed of their heritage. It just thought it was refreshing to see the opposite if even for a little while." -ty -snip- I'm not doing the essay/comments any justice with these excerpts. I found the essay and all of the comments to be a very interesting read. |
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19 Sep 09 - 09:43 PM (#2727023) Subject: RE: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: Janie I'm afraid I was at least partially unable to follow or make sense of the comments you posted above, Azzizi, even when I went to the website you linked. I confess I have not owned a television in decades, I do see references to Jon and Kate on the web, and surmise they feature in some "reality show" on TV. Having seen many references to reality shows", but never having seen a "reality show,", I am more than a little clueless. A long winded way of saying I have no context to understand much about the comments on the site to which you linked |
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19 Sep 09 - 11:36 PM (#2727062) Subject: RE: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: Amos When Barky was about four she was telling BBW all about a new friend she had made at day care, and for some reason, BBW asked if she were black. No idea why. The telling thing was that Barky couldn't answer the question. She literally did not know or had never noticed. Made me proud. |
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19 Sep 09 - 11:53 PM (#2727071) Subject: RE: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: katlaughing That's the way Morgan is, Amos...folks just are folks to him. Janie, I though you might be interested in this article in the NYTs, about how our social lives effect us. The headline is rather misleading as it is a lengthy article and covers much, much more. Here's a bit from page 2: By analyzing the Framingham data, Christakis and Fowler say, they have for the first time found some solid basis for a potentially powerful theory in epidemiology: that good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses. The Framingham participants, the data suggested, influenced one another's health just by socializing. They go on to point out it can work likewise in a negative way. |
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20 Sep 09 - 03:58 PM (#2727544) Subject: RE: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: Ebbie I think the first time that my daughter noticed a different skin color - we lived among many Mexican people (her best friend was Mexican) but only a few Blacks- was when she was about four years old. We were in the bank and a man at the next window was in a suit and tie - and his skin was *very* dark. I didn't hear him speak, but he may have been a visitor or recent emigre, rather than US born. Anyway, my daughter stared at him; she even pulled my arm to draw my attention to him, and said something like: "Look at that man." I just said, "Yes, some people are Black, some are not." It seemed to satisfy her. She said, "Oh." |
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20 Sep 09 - 04:11 PM (#2727560) Subject: RE: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies) I was still a baby, and in my pram the first time I saw a black lady. My mother said that my eyes nearly popped out of my head, and that I stared after her - craning my head out of my pram until she'd totally disappeared. When I was a tot (speaking by then) I was with her in a lift. A man with a missing leg was there too - apparently I was equally captivated by this new phenomenon and gazed at him (secretly from behind) quite stunned, but without piping up. I think what interested my Mother, was the fact I was aware enough of the sensitivities of human interaction by that point, not to comment. |
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21 Sep 09 - 02:54 PM (#2728210) Subject: RE: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: GUEST,leeneia I'm baffled. I clicked on the link called 'Even Babies Discriminate' and found an article on children 5 to 7 years old. If the suits at Newsweek don't know the difference between a baby and a seven-year-old, then they are so ignorant about children that I have no time to waste on their articles. |
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21 Sep 09 - 03:48 PM (#2728266) Subject: RE: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: Mrrzy Of course babies can discriminate, in the meaning of "tell the difference between" - but they don't CARE about the difference until some grown-up makes them. My kids used to refer to people by the color of their clothes, as in, look at that black guy over there (to someone of any race at all, wearing a black shirt), but they would be pointing out something interesting, like He's dancing in the rain, not just the fact that he was "black" (in any sense). My kids are white and have suffered from racial discrimination, in their majority-black middle school. (No, you can't play with us, honky!) But they understand that if people who are black are fighting, it's the fighting that's the problem, not the fact that the fighters are black, since that wasn't exceptional. |
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21 Sep 09 - 04:16 PM (#2728293) Subject: RE: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: Janie Actually, leeneia, while the article gave a lot of attention to that 5-7 year old range, it also discussed research with infants beginning at age 6 months. |
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21 Sep 09 - 04:36 PM (#2728318) Subject: RE: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: GUEST,leeneia It's still sloppy reporting. But never mind that. If they did a study and asked parents 'How much do you converse with your child about anything?' (not just race) the results would probably dismay us all. I say 'converse' because I would not want scolding and mere reminding (Tie your shoe. Do you homework.) to count. I don't suppose I have to talk at length about it. We all know: people work long hours kids go to 'activities' rather than spend time parents few people have family meals together day care plugging kids in I stepped on an elevator yesterday and saw a couple with a little girl about 5 or 6. She had earphones and something electronic to listen to. (As I stepped on, she took it out of her ears.) Her parents weren't speaking to her or to each other. I smiled at the little girl, and she gave me a radiant smile in return. An adult had befriended her! I have a friend who is second in command of a suburban school system. It is not a poverty-stricken area. She says "Any adult who will TALK to them...!" |
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22 Sep 09 - 12:24 PM (#2728911) Subject: RE: BS: Does Baby Discriminate? Newsweek From: Mrrzy I refuse to let my kids get those Ipod things for that very reason. I argue with those commercials Look at the happy family in the van with nobody even watching or listening to the same thing, let alone actually TALKING... but now that they are in high school they have to be in something, otherwise, no activities, no driving them places, etc. Let them have a life, in other words. Thread creep alert... |