<p>I tutor little kids. Like 6 and 7 year olds - first and second graders. </p>
<p>They are the sweetest people ever. They are not disrespectful - they are playful - no doubt, but tend to listen to you after a bit of coaxing. They enjoy seeing me and I enjoy meeting them as well. </p>
<p>Despite the fact that we - as in I and the little first and second graders - are of disparate races, the little kids don't notice. They don't see me and start imitating my language. They don't see me and start hurling racial slurs. They don't see me and start asking me what I eat or tell me what I supposedly eat every day. </p>
<p>All of the above applies to every single one of the little first and second graders in the entire school - when I walk through down hallway bustling with children to the two specific kids I tutor - some of the little kids might look at me - but all of them look at me innocently, with none of the prejudice or malice that high school kids seem to have caught somewhere along the way from elementary school to high school. </p>
<p>The little kids - the ones I tutor and all of the ones in the school - are in this sort of state of nature - they have not been besmirched by society's corrupting influences. They have never even once pointed out the disparity in our phenotypes - a common subject matter for immature high school students nowadays, it seems. Well, to be honest, one time, one kid asked me why my hair looked different from his hair. He did so innocently - without malice. </p>
<p>It seems to me as if these kids are race-blind. They are in Rousseau's state of nature. The kids remind me of when I was their age. I don't remember my eyes' looking at people, my neurons' firing, my brain's instantly classifying people into neat little racial categories (and yes possessives + gerunds are properly used here). Aren't the little kids in this ideal state - innocent and shielded from the racial tensions that characterize the world today? When did we become attuned to race? Do you tend to classify people by race? I admit I do. I try to override this now seemingly innate function by approaching people with an open mind.</p>
<p>*When did we become attuned to race? Do you tend to classify people by race? I admit I do. I try to override this now seemingly innate function by approaching people with an open mind. *</p>
<p>You’ve likely heard this before, or deduced it yourself, but there was most likely an evolutionary advantage to discriminating against members of other tribes […] hence we now discriminate against people today. This obviously doesn’t justify it, for it merely explains why it occurs.</p>
<p>Some people even speculated that if different races had been separated longer, they might have evolved into different species. They weren’t geographically isolated long enough to become reproductively isolated.</p>
<p>okay … i liked the vein of that post IceCube. :). </p>
<p>i’ll be honest, up until hs, i never felt scared or threatened by anyone (i felt scared of the unknown, of doing things i had never done before, but not because people were going to hurt me).</p>
<p>When i got to hs i started to see that the thing to be scared of about the unknown was what strangers might do to me. I took the public buses, walked on the city streets, learned to avoid black people with hoods, and so on. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t be scared of people if I were in a setting where I knew people didn’t hurt each other or single out people for emotional abuse.</p>
<p>and i feel it’s the being scared of people part that (for me) made me try to categorize people as potentially harmful or positively harmless. naturally, this sort of discernment, influenced by external sources (the media and so on) and some of my own observations, ends up as a reflexive judgement of strangers, one which correlates with many well known stereotypes. </p>
<p>but i agree - I saw some people from middle school this last year (there was a reunion) and I ENVIED how i had seen them all as nice beautiful humans back then (i really did), and felt REPULSED by how now I saw them for the intelligence i suspected they had, for the outlooks and world views I associated with that intelligence, and all sorts of other things. the group was, overall, a lot more ugly to my eyes, and the innocence of my previous conceptions of them was lost. it was truly heartbreaking to see what i saw, and to not be able to see what I had seen.</p>
<p>I didn’t even notice people were different colors until spring of 2nd grade. I don’t know whether that was because I was innocent or painfully oblivious (still am). I mean, half my family is completely black, and half my family is completely white, but I’d never actually noticed :P.</p>
<p>Anyway, my teacher pointed out that without Martin Luther King, “xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx, lldm21, xxx, and xxx wouldn’t be in class with us today.” I looked around the classroom and it was like my blinders had been taken off.</p>
<p>That’s what I’m talking about. The kids are behind a Veil of Ignorance. From behind that Veil, they are able to make just decisions - i.e. race blind decisions. The kids don’t say - hey, you’re (insert color), so I can’t be friends with you, whether consciously or subconsciously. Hey, you’re (insert color), so I’m going to walk away from you. Hey, you supposedly eat this, so I’m going to make fun of you because I’m insecure. Hey, you look different from me, so I’m going to taunt you because I’m insecure. </p>
<p>I almost want to slap your teacher for taking off your blinders, but they would probably have been removed anyway by someone. </p>
<p>The problem with race is that it is a construct. Even if you wish to argue that race is not a construct, the whole concept of race is becoming obsolete given multiracial people. A significant portion of the US population isn’t fitting into neat categories anymore. </p>
<p>My point is: if race did not exist, racism would not be possible. Lldm21, if you were never introduced to the concept of race, you could not be a racist. You may discriminate people based on their genders, ages, etc., but for you to discriminate based on race - would not be possible. Wouldn’t it be ideal if we were stuck in the state of the lldm21 before his teacher took off his blinders? Wouldn’t it be ideal if we were stuck in the state of the little kids I tutor?</p>
<p>I have time now, so I can actually give a real response. I agree that teachers are a lot to blame. I think I remember that same speech from my second grade teacher “Without MLK xxx, xxx, xxx, would’t be in this class.” Because things like that are so stressed by teachers so much I think my school always knew that black people were a different race. But aside from that we were ignorant. Hell I was even ignorant about my own race. I’m half white/ half middle eastern, and I never realized till 7th grade that my mom wasn’t white, and I wasn’t white. I think that the racism that teachers and the school system in general try so hard to prevent is being subconsciously encouraged by them. I know that by my teacher laying out all of the facts and stereotypes about muslims (which I actually am not) only gave the 7th graders more prejudice. I can’t count how many times I’ve been accused of being a muslim (which I will again state I am not), having a bomb, being a terrorist, or asked if I’m going to Mecca. It peaked in 8th and only happens occaisionally now, but still I blame it on my teacher.</p>
<p>?!! What educational value does laying out stereotypes have? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Your teachers are partly to blame. I blame your 2nd grade teacher for even introducing race. I will not introduce the concept of race to my kids - e.g. I’m not going to tell them “you’re _____” and that guy on the street is this and that woman on the street is this and that child over there looks to be half this and half that. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate how part of maturing seems to be recognizing one’s race or racial composition. Again, I will harp back to my point about race: if we were all race blind - then racism would not be possible. If Zimmerman were race-blind, maybe Treyvon would still be with us. I say maybe because Zimmerman perhaps was not judging Treyvon based on race. </p>
<p>I will add that when I was in kindergarten, people started asking me if I were this or I were that. It was not until rather recently until I started actually noticing the difference in phenotypes among people of different races. So I too was once behind a Veil of Ignorance. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I guess that just comes with being a minority in America. Well, racism isn’t a one way street, but much of racism does go one way. I really feel for Middle Eastern people because they are the largest current scapegoat of America. They take it not only from immature kids but also from immature politicians. </p>
<p>On a somewhat unrelated note, I’ve always had a underlying desire to pass as white sometimes. I wonder what it would be like to be identified as white. I wouldn’t consciously identify my self as white to others, but I just wonder what it would be like to be seen as white. E.g. if my skin were of a slightly different hue, I could probably pass as white. If I were to walk into a hardware store and if people thought I was white, what would that be like? Would I be treated differently? If I were to walk into a restaurant and people thought I was white, what would that be like? I guess this explains why I have this sort of predilection for mixed people - they can, at will, identify with different heritages.</p>
<p>Guys, this might be absolutely awful, but because I went to a private, all-white school, I could not tell the difference between Asian people (though to be fair, all the Asian people I’d seen had been on tv - and we don’t have a tv).
Also, I couldn’t tell the difference between these two (white) kids I knew, but I could invariably tell the difference between seemingly identical horses.</p>
<p>Now imagine if you could not distinguish races at all.</p>
<p>I suppose that not being able to distinguish among Asians is a good thing because now you can’t apply any of the stereotypes that apply to each category of Asians … </p>
<p>There is only a very limited number of Asians present on TV. Many also tend to be part white. I find this unfair, but I suppose it is to be expected, given that Asians are nowhere near a majority in America.</p>
<p>i tend to have a predilection for immigrants? the ones that come here because they’e intelligent? they always seem humble and kind and curious. </p>
<p>i’m white. the advantage of that for me has been i’ve never had to consume myself with thinking about my race or what it meant or how i felt about it (which i imagine i may have, had i not been white). </p>
<p>if human level intelligence did not exist this discussion wouldn’t even be happenin’. racism wouldn’t exist, so many things would be simpler. if we’re talking about a preferable state of nature, i kind of like the mountain gorillas (they are quite kind compared to some of our other ancestral relatives, like baboons). the cognitive abilities of humans, and the degree of our self awareness and everything are the breeding grounds for tons of unpleasant phenomena, new avenues of suffering. </p>
<p>on the bright side of all the unpleasant things we get to understand the stars though.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>haha i didn’t know what to make of your post! I found the prospect of you being able to tell horses apart better than human hilarious though :p.</p>
<p>I once heard that “racism”, or more accurately prejudice is a natural predisposition that is catalyzed once a child distinguishes between the foods s/he likes or those s/he doesn’t. I don’t know if that’s true, and a quick google search could probably invalidate this, but assuming it is…</p>
<p>What do you think? Personally, I think that even if discrimination is natural, we have the intelligence to rise above it. Abiding by that principle is, in my mind, equivalent to refusing to take medicine because being sick is “natural”. Any objections? Thoughts?</p>
<p>I think I started categorizing people based on their race/phenotype starting in 4th grade when I moved to a new country. There, my sibling and I were pretty much the only kids at the school who were not white. It obviously didn’t help, in addition to the fact that I was the new kid, that I was physically bigger than most of them, and that the teachers seemed to favor me (no idea why, race might’ve played a factor).</p>
<p>On the first day of school, some kid made fun of my manner of talking (my slang) and I was pretty shocked. After that, some of them bullied me for the rest of my time there, and, since I was so young in a new country without any friends, I could only respond passively. It was probably around this time that I started to notice race and how others treated me based on that. I saw that people wanted to hurt me, and saw a maliciousness that I had never seen before (pretty similar idea to enfieldacademy’s point).</p>
<p>Sometimes I do envy how younger kids don’t seem to have the same media influenced judgement of their parents - ignorance is bliss I guess.</p>
<p>In the same way that I wouldn’t blame a dog for discriminating against humans because it was abused by one, i wouldn’t blame a human for discriminating against dogs because he was bitten.</p>
<p>yes, the human may have the intelligence to see that his discrimination against the dogs may be unfair, but that understanding alone may not change his reaction to seeing dogs (of fear and aversion, which could be considered discrimination).</p>
<p>Where things go wrong, in my opinion, is probably when the human who is bitten teaches his kids to discriminate against dogs too. because that is not using his intelligence where it could be used - if he understands that his discrimination against dogs is largely irrational, then why would he pass it on to his kids? that’s a grave and stupid mistake. </p>
<p>because that is dangerous. Then you get kids who have been indoctrinated to discriminate against dogs, without the capacity to realize their discrimination of dogs is unfair, and who never give the dogs a chance because of it.</p>
<p>Now, maybe some of those problems would be mitigated if the children grew up in a setting with lots of adults of different view points (some of who loved dogs), and so on, and not with an unfortunate set of parents who would impress false realities on them.</p>