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For
ten days broken up over the summer, my daughter, my wife, and
I participated in a kindergarten-preparedness course. The idea
behind the program was to have those children who were not in
daycare come see what it was like to be in school. My wife and
I thought this was great. We were concerned that our daughter
needed a little practice with that whole socialization thing,
and that she had some language problems, largely stemming from
her being spoken to at home in both Japanese and my mumbled English.
After
several days in the course, we were asked to fill out a survey.
My wife began filling out the form, while I was distracted by a
conflict between my daughter and another student. Before turning
the form in, my wife asked me to look it over. Under the question
"What did you like best about the program?" my wife had written
"Kids of different races." I thought about scribbling out the answer,
understanding that the survey administrators were fishing for compliments
to help establish the program for later years and other schools
(which I support). We were supposed to write something like "the
counting activities" or "the ABC books" or "the patronizing parental
advice." The program organizers had not actively sought out children
of varied races. It just turns out that's who was enrolled in the
school, and who had responded to the offer. And there was great
diversity in the small class: my mixed kid, three Euro-American
kids, two Filipino-American kids, two Mexican-American kids, one
kid from Africa, one from the Middle East, one from Cambodia, and
one from Brazil.
I decided
to scrawl "and backgrounds" behind my wife's comment, a lame effort
at trying to clarify what she meant. I realized my wife was actually
happy at the makeup of the class. Growing up in Japan, she was
surrounded only by other Japanese kids in a highly homogenous culture.
She enjoys America, despite its problems, because one is not expected
to live to a single, overriding standard, but is given room to figure
out who one is, and what that might mean. As for me, growing up
in suburban Oregon, I was raised in the midst of almost exclusively
white kids. And while the culture that I grew up in was not quite
as cohesive as that in Japan, there were plenty of strong messages
about what is "Right." Despite that whole notion of individuality
in America, anything that made one noticeably different from the
majority, aside from athletic talent, had its consequences. And
while being non-white did not necessarily invite hostility, it did
tend to push one toward caricature rather than individuality, and
invited either too much attention, or granted one a high degree
of invisibility.
At the
schools I attended, the most conspicuous kids were the African-American
kids. I knew about each one of them (from grade school through
high school that totaled five people). The black kids were condemned
to an odd lot: popular, but as novelties. They were required to
perform. The white kids seemed to have a collective idea, probably
from TV shows, that all black people were hilarious, jive-talking,
wisecracking, cool cats. A black kid in any of the schools I attended
could have told the lamest joke from a Bazooka Joe wrapper and gotten
white kids to laugh to just near pants-wetting, provided the joke
was told with the proper inflections that later came to be known
as ebonics.
As for
Asian kids, there was a weird dichotomy in operation. While African-American
kids were decidedly American, there was no question that they were
expected to be different from whites. But for those of Asian origin,
some were Americans and some were Asians. That is, some were considered
American by virtue of their conformity of behavior and speech.
Regardless of their non-white appearance, they seemed to act, dress,
and sound like everybody else. Then there were the Asians who did
not come across as American; such as the Vietnamese students who
were in some of the same advanced level math and science classes
I was in, but who were absent from advanced classes in subjects
like English, and American history. They were Asian in the sense
that they spoke with accents, had non-Americanized names, and had
cultural traditions separate from mainstream, white America. They
were generally well liked by those in class with them, while ignored
by others, but definitely not popular in that hierarchical sense
of the word.
To wrap
up the overview of my school experience with non-Euro kids, even
though there were several, I was barely aware of any students of
Mexican origin. And while this betrays an assumption, I think that
most of the Mexican students escaped my notice, and the attention
of most of the white kids in school, because they were largely confined
to ESL programs, constantly separated from the rest of "us".
I think
it is likely the skewed context of my exposure to people of non-white
backgrounds that has left me even more nervous around people of
other races than I am with white folk. This is not to say that
I am fearful of people with different backgrounds, but that I become
concerned that I might be patronizing toward them or setting up
artificial differences between us. I find myself obsessing about
any possible verbal cues that may make me sound too much like the
sheltered white American that I largely am.
In the
end, I'm glad for my daughter being in school (and in a neighborhood)
with kids of varied ethnicities and backgrounds, languages and beliefs.
I am not naive enough to think her exposure to people of other races
will completely eliminate any race-based conflicts in her life,
and I do not believe that the world will soon become racism-free.
However, I cannot help but think it is healthy to be exposed to
people of different races and different backgrounds on a regular
basis to the point where one does not think much about it anymore.
As for
myself, it is only through contact with people that I have made
any progress toward ending my obsessions about the surface differences
between others and myself. And I still have a long way to go.
Copyright © 2000 Jonathan Schildbach. All Rights
Reserved
Jonathan
Schildbach is a hand-wringing liberal who realizes that there
are no easy answers to difficult situations, but wants to believe
things can get better.
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