Teaching children not to observe race devalues the human experience
He is a good friend of mine, so when he said it I cringed.
“I really want to raise my son to be color blind. I don’t want him to see race. It’s important that he treats everyone just as a human, you know?”
I did know. I knew that he was saying this with good intentions. He did not want to raise his child to have prejudice for another based on their race or the color of their skin. He was trying to say that he wanted his child to be accepting of everyone without the potential obstacle of race. I knew because there was a time in my life that I felt the same way. To be “color blind”.
“I don’t think that is actually what you want,” I said.
“Do you think I’m racist?” He snapped.
I did not. What I argued is that what you believe to be a helpful approach to raising a child without prejudice is in fact, potentially detrimental to their own development and their understanding of race in general. Racial color blindness influences the way a child comes to understand people and their experience. That can create prejudice and misunderstanding, perhaps down right ignorance.
“I want my daughter to see race, to understand race, and to value her own race and seek understanding in the racial experiences of others.”
“What do you mean’ her own race’?” He looked at me a bit dumbfounded. “What race is that?” He made imaginary quotations with his fingers, as if “race” was being misused in this particular context.
This is not an uncommon experience among white people, such as myself. More specifically I am of Scottish and German decent and, incidentally, I am a racial being. It took me a while before I understood that as a white male, I have a race. My race, however, was never something that was talked about while I was growing up. It was not until I was in college that I began to value that I possessed race and a specific identity as a result of that. I always thought that “race” was something that only “others” had. And it was clear to me that this was identifiable by the color of their skin, which I was, with good intentions, raised to ignore.
By being color blind (which is impossible) and by “ignoring” the color of another, I was in fact, segregating my thoughts about them based on color. I was devaluing their own experiences with race and not acknowledging the realities of power and privilege I received as a middle-class white male. Most detrimental, I did not view myself with race. I truly was colorblind and ignorant as a result. Looking back, did that make me racist? I do not believe so although I would respect others opinions to the contrary. Did it make me prejudice? I believe it did.
Dr. Shelly Tochluk, in her book, Witnessing Whiteness, suggests that being “color blind” has unintentional outcomes, even when done with the best of intentions. Being “color blind” tells people that race doesn’t matter and in turn, we ignore their lived experience. It devalues their reality. Being “color blind” tells people that we will ignore them when they talk about their experiences of racism, which prevents us from truly acknowledging the privilege that exists in society and institutions.
I am attempting to raise my daughter to value and celebrate race, cultures, and pluralism. I hope that she recognizes that her friends in school are black, are Hispanic, are of Asian descent, and I hope that she seeks to understand more about what that means for them. What that means in comparison to her experience. I hope that it opens her eyes and I hope that this known reality, which has come to her by first acknowledging race, will be her education. Most important, I want her to see that she possess race and to understand what her race and culture mean. All the historical triumphs and all the historical failures.
At five years old, she knows that her friends, parent’s friends, her uncle and her cousin, all have different colored skin; but she has not yet begun to connect that with stereotypes and prejudice. I value the importance of open dialogue and exposing her to culture as an attempt to begin shaping her knowledge of race in a way that will allow her to challenge those stereotypes that she will one day confront. Mindful of the racial and cultural representations she sees in her story books, television shows, and in her toys, my spouse and I attempt to create a multicultural environment for her to experience, to learn, to grow. As she grows and becomes developmentally able to understand, we will dialogue about racism, about privilege, and about the social constructs and biological realities of race. I cannot assume that this approach is full proof, but I know she will not be colorblind.
—photo by ankakay/Flickr
Was it the use of double-u tee eff? Oh! Maybe because I mentioned Mr. Hilter?
Andrew, So your article leaves me confused. You write “This is not an uncommon experience among white people, such as myself. More specifically I am of Scottish and German decent and, incidentally, I am a racial being. It took me a while before I understood that as a white male, I have a race. My race, however, was never something that was talked about while I was growing up. It was not until I was in college that I began to value that I possessed race and a specific identity as a result of that. I always thought that “race”… Read more »
Jay- Interestingly enough, I’m not saying how anyone should identify themselves. That is a rather personal matter. What I am saying is that I believe raising a child to be colorblind is an option that while often well intended by whites, it has consequences that are often not considered or addressed.
Thank you for your stimulating? conversation.
This is a smart article. When I was a child, I truly never saw race and I don’t believe my peers did either. I’ll always value those childhood memories because it’s my best window into seeing what a society without race would look like. But as I got older, colorblindness definitely blinded me to the fact that race/ethnicity could indeed explain a big part of my life from many different angles including my upbringing, how I socialized, who befriended me, how I viewed myself, and so on. I tried to assimilate for a long time into mainstream white culture and… Read more »
This is a really intriguing discussion. As a mixed race person, I must say I grew up completely aware of race insomuch as I knew that everyone else I knew was simply different than me and moreover I came to the conclusion that we we’re all different. How many drops of blood does it take from white to become brown and brown to become black? It all seems very fluid and arbitrary to me. Certainly wherever I go, people determine how they choose to perceive my race and therefore apply that assumption to my identity based upon my backdrop. Which… Read more »
Sorry, but that’s exactly how I did raise and would raise children (in terms of initiating this discourse.) But I don’t think it can happen in reality. Kids have questions, and you have to answer them honestly. Little kids don’t see race, but they later experience what other kids say and what adults sometimes say, and you have to deal with that. It’s just that the more or less “left end” of the race discourse strikes me as fairly grotesque. For example, I wouldn’t teach a child about “privilege,” because I think that that is so variable, individual to individual,… Read more »
Hank- Thank you for your reply. I appreciate your insights although I don’t entirely agree with all of them. I’m interested more on your insights about how teaching a child about “privilege” would “actually produce a racist reaction”? Granted, there is a developmentally appropriate time to discuss these things; however, I must acknowledge that it is also one of my privileges as a middle class white male to not have too. I wonder about the experience of the young black child that sees security following his father around Target? Or about the child in the back seat that witnesses his… Read more »
Andrew, as a sociologist, I know that the type of incidents you bring up can be quite real. I also know that adolecence is a time when teen-agers repudiate parent values. If I were a parent of color, and those things happened to me, of course I’d discuss them with a child who observed them. I remember having really long hair in 1970 and applying for an apartment, and having the manager look at me like I was a loon. My own experience with people of color once I entered academia, though, is that the majority of colleagues came from… Read more »
Thanks Hank for the insight.