From Geek Dad
Here’s a quick, two-step method for raising racist kids:
Black and white children playing together at playground. (Photo by Selwyn Tait/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)
Step One: Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color. Be “color blind.”
Step Two: Actually, that’s it. There is no Step Two.
Congratulations! Your children are well on their way to believing that your race is better than everyone else’s.
Surprised? So were authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman when they started researching the issue of kids and race for their book NurtureShock, published in 2009. It turns out that a lot of our assumptions about raising our kids to appreciate diversity are entirely wrong:
It is tempting to believe that because their generation is so diverse, today’s children grow up knowing how to get along with people of every race. But numerous studies suggest that this is more of a fantasy than a fact.
Let me expand on this—NurtureShock explores various aspects of parenting and children through scientific studies, citing hard data but also using anecdotes to humanize the numbers. One chapter is titled “Why White Parents Don’t Talk About Race.” What Bronson and Merryman discovered, through various studies, was that many white parents don’t ever talk to their kids about race. And we’re talking about white parents who want to encourage multiculturalism, the ones who hope their kids will grow up “color-blind.”
Read the full article HERE.
