White Privilege
Band-aids are racist. Think about it. How true is this? There are so many things in life that I (we) take for granted because I am white. I come from a predominantly white, middle class, suburban area. I never have to walk into a public place feeling untrusted or dangerous. I never am thought of as less than. I am so lucky just for being white it is disgusting. In class, we watched a video where a teacher tried to demonstrate the effect of white privilege to a class of white children. She separated them by blue eyes and brown eyes, giving the blue-eyed people the upper hand. It was remarkable at how fast those lovely students turned on one another just because a teacher whom they trusted told them one type of eyes was better than the other. This video was eye-opening in many ways. The thing that stood out most for me is how moldable children are. From a young age, they soak in every ounce of information given to them. If we are teaching hate in our culture, how do we expect future generations to become more accepting? The classroom should be grounds for open discussion and safe learning.
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Color Lines
In this reading, Olivia Gude talks about the importance that color holds in society. From an early age we begin to associate certain colors with truths learned from observations. But color meanings differ throughout the world. For instance, white is used as the color for death in Mexican culture. In our culture, white is associated with light, a good color, while black is associated with death and evil. Some say that we should let be the differences between cultures and that pointing out differences in colors only separates the stereotypes further. We should not suppress the differences, but instead teach our students tolerance and acceptance of all cultures.
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Starting Small: Teaching Children Tolerance
This documentary is about creating a caring community in the classroom through and anti-bias curriculum. My favorite story profiled was the one about skin color. In a classroom full of children, the difference between light skin and white skin was brought up. We must address our differences in order to move past them because children, especially, are very acutely aware of people’s differences. In the skin color exercise, students discovered what their real skin color was in words other than black, white, and brown. Instead they learned that every person has a different skin tone and began to refer to their skin as peach, almond, apricot, chestnut, copper, olive, and umber. With this exercise, children already began to fell more comfortable in their own skin and began to see others for more than just their differences. It helped to create an open learning environment where they were unafraid to ask difficult questions. We must make children focus on the positives within themselves and others. We have to find out how we belong together in order to thrive together in this world.
Sarah Kedzior 