Youth and prejudice

After reading this weeks module and lesson commentary 10 regarding the frontline video of Miss Elliot and her class it made me think of a similar incident that happened at my sons kindergarten. One day when I picked my son up from school he said to me that he wanted curly hair like his friend Koda. Mind you my son is the only person of color in his class. He has curly hair but Koda has long blonde ringlets and resembles a California kid who surfs haha. When I asked my son why he felt like he needed to look like Koda when he has his own curly hair his response was everyone says Koda’s hair is beautiful.

While I don’t think this is a sign of prejudice I do think this is how those negative and discriminatory thoughts and perceptions are formed. I had to remind my son that just because other people my have attributes that are complimented it does not take away from him. I reminded him that people say he has the best smile and that he actually gets quite a lot of special attention from certain teachers. I could tell that there was a level of jealousy that sparked in my son and it’s sad that this is a normal response to something pertaining to appearance. I think that it’s important to start looking at peers as equal and to focus on things not based in vanity even at a early age. Additionally, I jokingly said to my children as we were getting in the car “get in losers we’re going shopping”… my son kindly reminded me that was a “bully phrase” and could hurt peoples feelings. Never had I been so proud that I was raising someone who cared how words effected others.

Where I grew up in Philadelphia, we called out race and often made fun of each other. When we had children of other races in our classroom we made it a point to target them. While this is not appropriate it was something that was the norm. For instance the one White kid in class was given the name White Boy.  We hadn’t viewed that as being discriminatory but now as I get older I notice how those same people I went to school with only see color. In a country that’s headed toward mixed race majority in the next 100 years, seeing color seems like a mute point.

 

1 comment

  1. Hey Author,

    Thank you for sharing the experience that your son had in his class. I feel like that’s a great example of prejudice; assuming that someone is better because of hairstyle/color. I wonder what additional information can be gathered about why your son believed that the other classmate’s hair was more beautiful than his own hair. Is this other classmate part of a wealthy family? Is his skin color different? Is he a better student? Or considered to be someone that receives more attention? There have to be some specific positive attributes that your son connects to that person’s hair and some of those questions might answer it. When I think about my own personal experiences, I always imagine having something that a popular kid had. Maybe they had a strong jawline, which made me want one too. Or maybe they simply had a cool accent and got a lot of attention for it. I wonder if the same situation applied to your son, as well.

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