Young’s People Understanding of Racism

If someone were to ask you what is racism, how would you respond? Take a minute too think about your respond. Did your response entitle anything about blacks and hate? Most people respond too this question by incorporating a racial slur (Bryan, A.,2012). By age 4 or 5, one is familiar and has a common sense of understanding and knowing the basics of race or racism. Young students have a common sense of what race and racism is, however curriculum is not incorporated to teach one about the ideological of race and racism. Therefore, if students receive proper education of race and racism the chances of them being racist is decreased with proper education and knowledge.

Most young students have an understanding of what racism is due to experiences through parents or family member. Any information that a child, have a strong sense is learned. Therefore, young students first learn about racism at home or behaviors that their parent exhibits towards others. However, every few parents actually have that conversation with their children about racism (Bryan, A.,2012).

School environments, are also a place where students encounter racism. In, schools there are students and staff of all sorts of races and cultures. Sadly, not all schools incorporate curriculum about racism and race. In fact, formal education reinforces, rather than challenges, theories if racism, and endorses the ideological of colour-blind racism through definitions and explanations (Bryan, A.,2012). Education fails too encourage students of all racial backgrounds to critique white domination to critically engage them with institutional racism, and highlight problems associated (Bryan, A.,2012). If, interventions were applied to broaden and educate students about racism and race, it would cause a great awareness to them in the future, when they are older, which potentially changes their way of thinking.

In the past there have been inventions, implemented where discrimination exercises were completed in order to teach students the principles of racism (A Class Divided.,1985). In the experiment completed by” A Class Divided”, students were separated by the color of their eye, and first blue eyed students had dominance and were considered to be more superior than brown eyed student (A Class Divided.,1985). And the next day, brown eye students were superior than blue eyed people (A Class Divided.,1985). Years, later when the students gathered together as adults, their way of thinking towards racism and race were positive because they treated everyone with respect and did not let differences in skin color play a role in how they treated someone (A Class Divided.,1985). And also, they were able to teach their children the same principle (A Class Divided.,1985). Therefore if schools incorporate similar exercises, where children at a young age are taught and educated on racism and race, these principles will carry to them when they are adults and may be passed down from one generation to the next, with the chances of decreasing potential of being racist.

References

A Class Divided. (1985, March 26). Retrieved October 28, 2020, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/class-divided/

Bryan, A. (2012). ‘You’ve got to teach people that racism is wrong and then they won’t be racist’: Curricular representations and young people’s understandings of ‘race’ and racism. Journal of Curriculum Studies44(5), 599–629. https://doi-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1080/00220272.2012.699557

Leave a Reply


Skip to toolbar