Even though I had a difficult time thinking about a time when I had experience
as being privileged I realized when I was younger I experienced a type of
privilege. While my sister and I were in elementary school we had a friend who
was an African-American girl. She lived fairly close to us so we would all ride
the same bus. There wasn’t much racial diversity in our school, in fact there
was very little. So I’m not sure if other children weren’t use to or accepting
of her but there would be times when we would all be together on the bus or in
public and people (mostly other students) would make comments to her in regards
to her race or would even give us weird looks as if we shouldn’t have all been
hanging out together. Or even be friends for that matter.. Although I always
felt terrible for her because of the comments her and her brother would receive
I also felt very fortunate because that wasn’t something I had experienced. She
would constantly tell us how upset she would become but it was hard to truly know
what she was dealing with because my sister and I have never had those negative
experiences.
I wish that children didn’t even pay attention to others race – I know
that is a pretty big wish but I feel that as they would get older they would be
able to teach their children and so on that race doesn’t matter. I don’t know
why there needs to be so many negative stereotypes and it is very sad that
children can pick up on them.
With all of that being said, those situations reminded me about a
documentary I had watched in one of my other classes. We watched a documentary
from CNN which showed how children view race (which I have the link below and
it is about 10 minutes). I was very surprised because of how recent this
documentary was (2012) and that these bigger racial issues still seem to be
problems within the schools. I know racism still exists but since society is
slowly changing I wish that would be something that would change too. Most
people truly don’t know how good they got it unless they have experienced a
situation similar to what minorities may have. It is so sad to see how young
children can be to experience and even partake in racial discrimination. I hope
that things will continue to change
That was a great clip on wonderful research, thanks for sharing. I think everyone should see it! It certainly carries the message that how we raise our children is so important. Remembering that everything we say and do teaches them a lesson. The fact that some of the kids were afraid their parents would be mad at them for liking a child with different skin color is a disappointing statement regarding the job they have done as parents. Awareness, with clips like this, may help to change this.
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