Race awareness

[pdxfoodmama]

So Asher and I went to the neighborhood pool this afternoon. When we got into the water, Asher caught sight of a dark-complected, cornrowed african or african-american boy, (there are many african families in our neighborhood), about 7 years old or so, as he bobbed past us on his way to his mates. Upon seeing this boy, Asher said "he's a monkey."

Comments

[shanamadele]

What she said, plus, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But, ultimately, sometimes even when it's just a cigar, kids need to learn that sometimes cigars = penises, and it's important to understand that people get rightly upset when they think you are talking about penises even when you meant to be talking about cigars.

So, I think your response was perfect, and that the door is always open to teach our kids about race and racism so that they will understand and be sensitive to how seemingly innocuous symbols become imbued with problematic meanings.

I like this blog for help thinking about these issues: http://www.antiracistparent.com/

(It's not every day I get to talk about penises...this is fun!)

[shanamadele]

Crap -- I just had another thought.

You and I, white women with white children, can call our children "silly monkeys" and no one bats an eyelash. That's white privilege.

It's an open question about what to do about that -- whether to stop using the phrase altogether or keep using it or whatever. But I need to name it and own up to it.

That is a hard one

[fawnapril]

I can't quite wrap my head around how you might explain the historical implications of calling an African American (African immigrant / refugee) a "monkey

[kaphine]

One of my favorite T-shirts depicts the difficulty scale for projects in ReadyMade Magazine with images of 4 men: monkey, cro-magnon, drudge and craftsman. About a year ago, then 6 year old Charlie asked me which one of them was the Native American. He pointed to cro-magnun and suggested that one was the Native American. After a brief ugh moment, I replied that none of them are specifically Native American, but a Native American would be most like the craftsman, but maybe wearing different clothing depending on what he or she was doing. He didn't have any follow up questions, but did keep re-iterating that the craftsman was most like a Native American throughout the evening.